Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” came directly out of Lindsey Buckingham’s breakup with Stevie Nicks, but the personal fallout didn’t end when their relationship did. The two still had to work together as members of the band, with Buckingham turning those complicated feelings into one of their best-known songs.
Buckingham and Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974, but their romantic relationship had fallen apart by the time the group began recording Rumours in 1976. They were forced to navigate the breakup while making an album that would become one of the most successful records in music history.
“Go Your Own Way” was Buckingham’s way of working through what had happened. In a 2018 Song Exploder interview, he said the song began “almost as a stream of consciousness,” with the lyrics serving as a way to start a conversation with Nicks and process the split.
Buckingham also helped put together the song’s instrumental sound. He looked to the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” for inspiration, especially its drum pattern, and worked with Mick Fleetwood to get a similar feel. He also used both “dirty” and “clean” guitar sounds to add some contrast.
The song’s emotional tension was obvious enough that even one radio DJ questioned it. After Buckingham heard “Go Your Own Way” on the radio, DJ B. Mitchell Reed followed the song by saying, “I don’t know about that one.” Buckingham called the station to ask why, and Reed told him he couldn’t find the beat.
Despite that reaction, the song became a defining track from Rumours, reaching No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. For Buckingham, though, it eventually represented more than the end of his relationship with Nicks.
He later described the writing process as cathartic, helping him accept that there was a “bigger picture” outside the band’s problems.
NME pointed out the contrast between Buckingham’s harsh lyrics and the song’s upbeat sound, writing that his “bitter chant of ‘You can go your own way’ must have cut like glass, and yet with its uplifting chord progression, it sounded, paradoxically, like the sweetest sentiment ever.”
It’s a fitting description for a song NME included among its “Most Explosive Choruses.”
Related: 1950 Country Ballad Named No. 1 Hit Became a Timeless Anthem
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