Go Your Own Way

"Go Your Own Way" is a song by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac from their eleventh studio album, Rumours (1977). The song was released as the album's first single in December 1976 in the United States. Written and sung by Lindsey Buckingham, it became the band's first top-ten hit in the United States. "Go Your Own Way" has been well received by music critics and was ranked number 120 by Rolling Stone magazine on their list of 500 greatest songs of all time in 2010, and re-ranked number 401 in 2021. They also ranked the song second on their list of the 50 greatest Fleetwood Mac songs.

Recorded in three separate studios, the track was developed over a period of four months. As with most tracks on the Rumours album, none of the instruments were recorded live together; the tracks were instead completed through a series of overdubs. Lyrically, "Go Your Own Way" is about Buckingham's breakup with his bandmate Stevie Nicks.

Composition
"Go Your Own Way" was written at a house the band rented in Florida between legs of their Fleetwood Mac Tour and was the first song Buckingham presented to the band for the Rumours album. Mick Fleetwood, the band's drummer, remembered that the house had a "distinctly bad vibe to it, as if it were haunted, which did nothing to help matters…". The lyrics at this stage had yet to be fleshed out, so Buckingham sang musical notes as placeholders in certain locations.

Buckingham wrote "Go Your Own Way" in what he described as "a stream of consciousness". "There was nothing about it that was thought out. It was just the raw expression of the emotion behind the song." When Buckingham presented the song to producer Ken Caillat, the latter was unsure if it had any potential. "Lindsey was beating his acoustic guitar as hard as he could and screaming his lungs out. The first time I heard it, I thought, What the heck is going on? It sounded so non-musical. I didn’t know if anything would come from it."

Recording
Early tracking was done with Mick Fleetwood using an eight-inch Ludwig snare in his drum kit, John McVie on a Fender bass, Christine McVie on Hammond organ, Stevie Nicks on tambourine, and Lindsey Buckingham on a 1959 Fender Stratocaster. Buckingham opted to play an electric guitar instead of an acoustic so he could record his parts in the same room as the rest of the band without worrying about audio leakage. None of Nicks' tambourine parts were ultimately used for the final recording.

Inspired by the drum feel of "Street Fighting Man" by the Rolling Stones, Buckingham sought to incorporate a variation of the groove in "Go Your Own Way". Caillat took notice of Buckingham's enthusiasm as he demonstrated the drum part to Fleetwood. "I remember watching him guide Mick (Fleetwood) as to what he wanted – he'd be so animated, like a little kid, playing these air tom fills with his curly hair flying. Mick wasn't so sure he could do what Lindsey wanted, but he did a great job, and the song took off." Fleetwood ultimately came up with his own variation of the "Street Fighting Man" groove by playing across the tom-toms and hitting the bass drum on the middle beat.

Initially, John McVie tracked a busier, and bouncier bass part that gave the song "a country feel". To prevent the verses from becoming too bloated, Buckingham asked him to play straight eighth notes. Buckingham granted McVie more artistic liberty on the choruses, which he opened up with a more melodic bass line. Overdubs of Hammond B3 organ, electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals, and assorted percussion such as the bell of a cymbal and maracas were also added to the mix. Buckingham wanted the electric rhythm guitars to sound like one instrument, so to fulfill that objective, he played a distorted guitar with little transience and layered it over a cleaner guitar. "That's just a technique of having a richer landscape to work with". The song follows a cyclic I-V-IV chord progression in the verses and a VII-IV-V chord progression in the chorus.

The band had a difficult time assembling a suitable guitar solo, so Caillat, who was away in Lake Tahoe for Christmas vacation, returned to Criteria Studios to finish the track. Caillat built the solo by piecing together six different lead guitar takes. He accomplished this by pulling up and muting individual guitar solos through faders. Caillat found the solo "seamless" despite its fragmented nature. A Shure SM57 microphone was used to capture the guitar solo and some of the vocals.

In the final mix, the kick drum became too overpowering at the end of the song; it created a pumping effect together with the rhythm guitar from the dynamic range compression. Producer/engineer Richard Dashut posited that they would not have encountered this "lucky mistake" had they mixed the song digitally.

Lyrics
Like most tracks on Rumours, the lyrical content of "Go Your Own Way" documents personal strain in relationships between band members. Buckingham wrote "Go Your Own Way" as a response to his breakup with fellow Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks, whom he had known since he was 16 years old. "I was completely devastated when she took off," Buckingham noted. "And yet I had to make hits for her. I had to do a lot of things for her that I really didn't want to do. And yet I did them. So on one level I was a complete professional in rising above that, but there was a lot of pent-up frustration and anger towards Stevie in me for many years."

When Nicks heard the song, she demanded that Buckingham remove the line "Packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do", but he ultimately kept the lyrics. Nicks later explained her feelings about the line: "I very much resented him telling the world that 'packing up, shacking up' with different men was all I wanted to do," she told Rolling Stone. "He knew it wasn't true. It was just an angry thing that he said. Every time those words would come onstage, I wanted to go over and kill him. He knew it, so he really pushed my buttons through that. It was like, 'I'll make you suffer for leaving me.' And I did."

Release and initial response
Although the release date for Rumours was set for February 1977, Fleetwood Mac wanted a single out in the US by Christmas 1976 (although in the UK and other markets, the single was released in February 1977); "Go Your Own Way", which had just been mastered, was chosen to fulfill that role. This marketing move proved to be a boon to album sales: Pre-orders had reached 800,000 copies, which at the time was the largest advance sale in Warner Brothers' history.

B. Mitchel Reed, a Los Angeles radio deejay in the 1970s, was underwhelmed when he first played the single on his program, telling his listeners "I don't know about that one". Later that day, Buckingham contacted Reed, asking what his issues were with the song; Reed informed Buckingham that he had a difficult time finding beat one. Buckingham attributed the problem to the acoustic guitar track he added late into production. While Buckingham maintained that the acoustic guitar glued the whole piece together, he believed that its entrance created confusion over the location of beat one. "As soon as I came up with the acoustic part, the whole song came to life for me because it acted as a foil for the vocals and a rhythmic counterpoint...so when it comes in, you don't have a reference point for where the 'one' is, or where the beat is at all. It's only after the first chorus comes in that you can realize where you are – and that's what that deejay was confused about."

Fleetwood characterized his playing as "capitalizing on (his) own ineptness". Since then, Fleetwood has declared "Go Your Own Way" as one of his favorite songs to play, and praised Buckingham's contributions to the track. Jeff Porcaro, the drummer for Boz Scaggs, as well as a founding member of Toto, was particularly impressed with Fleetwood's drumming on "Go Your Own Way". On nights when Boz Scaggs opened for Fleetwood Mac, Porcaro watched Fleetwood's drumming from the side of the stage. Intrigued by his playing, Porcaro approached Fleetwood after a live gig; Fleetwood explained to Porcaro that his dyslexia prevented him from understanding the minutiae of his drumming. Fleetwood said of that conversation, "It was only after we continued to talk that Jeff realized I wasn't kidding around. We eventually had a tremendous laugh about it..."

Critical reception
"Go Your Own Way" has achieved critical acclaim in retrospective reviews. Noting the song's resurgence in popularity with millennials, James Lachno marvels at the song's appeal with younger people, especially when juxtaposed with its alternative contemporaries. "Recently, Go Your Own Way and The Chain – better known as the BBC's Formula One theme tune – have become 2am favourites for bleary-eyed twentysomethings desperate to keep a house party going. By contrast, pioneering punk hits released in the same year such as God Save the Queen and White Riot never seem to get a look in." Daryl Easlea of BBC described Buckingham's compositions as the best tracks on Rumours, "Go Your Own Way" included. In a review of the Rumours Deluxe Edition, Steven Rosen praised Buckingham's acoustic guitar strumming and raw vocal delivery, all of which keeps the listener "riveted". Matthew Greenwald of AllMusic noted the song's folky sound, reminiscent of pre-Beatles bands like the Everly Brothers. Greenwald also praised the lively chord changes and bombastic choruses. "All of these factors, plus a great performance from the band (especially Buckingham's exquisite guitar solo) helped make the song one of the band's biggest and most timeless hits, ever." Billboard felt the song sounded somewhat like Jefferson Starship.

"Go Your Own Way" was ranked number 120 by Rolling Stone magazine on their list of 500 greatest songs of all time in 2010, and re-ranked number 401 in 2021. It is on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list. Rolling Stone also ranked it No. 1 on its list of Fleetwood Mac's 50 Greatest Songs. In 2012, "Go Your Own Way" was listed by music magazine NME in 33rd place on its list of "50 Most Explosive Choruses." The Guardian and Paste ranked the song number two and number eight, respectively, on their lists of the 30 greatest Fleetwood Mac songs.

"Go Your Own Way" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Arrangement in 1978, but lost to "New Kid in Town" by the Eagles.

Commercial performance
Like their last three singles from the album Fleetwood Mac, "Go Your Own Way" charted in the US. The track made its first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated January 8, 1977, where it entered at No. 71. Two weeks later, the single ascended into the top 40. On March 12, 1977, the song reached its peak of No. 10, a position it held for two weeks. The song spent a total of 11 weeks in the top 40. In Fred Bronson's Billboard's Hottest Hot 100 Hits, a book that lists the top 5000 most successful songs released between July 9, 1955, and February 3, 2007 in terms of chart performance, "Go Your Own Way" ranks 4201st.

In the UK, the single was not as successful, only reaching No. 38 with an initial chart run of four weeks. However, the song was popular in the UK over a longer period as Rumours received more radio airplay, and it re-entered the singles chart as a digital download on several occasions, beginning in 2009, eventually accumulating ten additional weeks on the UK chart. In November 2023, the song was certified quadruple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), denoting sales and streams of over 2,400,000 units.

In New Zealand, the single debuted at No. 40 on March 13, 1977. Two weeks later, it broke into the top 30. The song remained at No. 30 for two weeks on the chart dated April 10 and 17. By April 24, "Go Your Own Way" reached its peak of No. 23. While "Go Your Own Way" fell off the chart by May 29, it re-entered the following week at No. 38, extending its total chart duration to 11 weeks.

Live performances and other appearances
"Go Your Own Way" has been played on every Fleetwood Mac tour since the Rumours Tour. Three years after its first appearance on Rumours, a live recording was included on Live, which was from a 1979 show in Cleveland. The song featured Buckingham's guitar tech, Ray Lindsey, on rhythm guitar. Even after Buckingham left the group in 1987, the band continued to play "Go Your Own Way" in concert. One of Buckingham's replacements, Billy Burnette, singled out "Go Your Own Way" as his favorite song to play on the Shake the Cage Tour. On the final two nights of the 1990 Behind the Mask Tour, Buckingham joined the band onstage to perform "Go Your Own Way". The 1994–95 lineup of Fleetwood Mac, which featured former Traffic guitarist Dave Mason, also included the song in their main setlist.

When touring for the 1997 live album The Dance, "Go Your Own Way" served as the main set closer, and Q magazine noted that Buckingham and Nicks "hammed" up the performance by exchanging glances throughout the song. Buckingham admitted that some of these gestures were exaggerated and said that performing the song with her provided some closure. "Silver Springs", previously relegated to the B-side of "Go Your Own Way", appeared alongside the latter on The Dance. This version was also issued as the b-side for the 1997 live renditions of "Silver Springs" and the German single for "Temporary One".

"Go Your Own Way" appeared on the DVD and CD of Fleetwood Mac: Live in Boston, filmed from their Say You Will Tour in 2003. On An Evening with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham's replacements Mike Campbell and Neil Finn shared guitar duties, while the latter also doubled up on lead vocals. On August 31, 2023, a live recording of "Go Your Way" was released one week before the release of the Rumours Live album. The recording was taken from an August 29, 1977 performance at the Forum in Los Angeles.

Throughout the years, "Go Your Own Way" has appeared on numerous compilations, including Greatest Hits in 1988, 25 Years – The Chain in 1992, The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac in 2002, Opus Collection in 2013, and 50 Years – Don't Stop in 2018.

Track listing

 * US vinyl (Warner Brothers Records – WBS 8304)
 * 1) "Go Your Own Way" – 3:34
 * 2) "Silver Springs" – 4:33

Personnel

 * Lindsey Buckingham – electric guitars, acoustic guitar, lead vocals, backing vocals
 * Stevie Nicks – backing vocals
 * Christine McVie – Hammond organ, backing vocals
 * John McVie – bass guitar
 * Mick Fleetwood – drums, maracas, cymbals

Other versions
Wilson Phillips recorded a new version of "Go Your Own Way" for their 2004 reunion album California. The song peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. In New Zealand, "Go Your Own Way" topped the country's adult contemporary radio chart for several weeks.

In 2011, Lea Michele of the American musical comedy drama Glee sang the song on season two's "Rumours" episode. This cover would go on to peak at No. 51 in the UK.

A year later, in 2012, the American singer-songwriter Lissie charted with her version. This rendition was included on the Nicholas Sparks movie soundtrack for Safe Haven.

In 2022, Ben Platt and Aly & AJ performed the song on the former's Reverie Tour and during the Disneyland portions on the 2023 edition of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.