Christine McVie Songs: 9 of the Fleetwood Mac Songbird’s Greatest Hits

Fleetwood Mac created some of the most enduring hits of the ’70s, and stood out for being one of the few rock bands at the time to prominently feature two women. Those women, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, were the voices behind many of the band’s signature songs, and when McVie passed away at age 79 in 2022, music fans around the world mourned the loss of one of rock’s most captivating presences.

Where Nicks had a distinctively dramatic voice that could reach trembling heights, McVie’s sumptuously British-accented vocals were lower and more grounded. Nicks may have been otherworldly, but McVie was always down to earth. While McVie’s style wasn’t as mystical and witchy as Nicks’, she projected a vibe of boho rocker cool like no other.

Here’s a look at some of the greatest Christine McVie songs.

Christine McVie Fleetwood Mac songs

Christine McVie was married to Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie from 1968 to 1976 and joined the band in 1970 — before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham came onboard! In the band, she played keyboards and wrote and sang many classic songs.

1. “Over My Head” (1975)

Fleetwood Mac is well known for their epic interpersonal drama. The breezy Christine McVie song “Over My Head,” was said to be inspired by her feelings for bandmate Lindsey Buckingham — even though she was married to John McVie at the time.

The song sparked a creative renaissance for the band, ushering in a poppier sound, and it became their first Top 40 hit in the US.

2. “Say You Love Me” (1975)

“Say You Love Me” has it all: McVie brings the sultry lead vocals and an undeniably catchy chorus, while Buckingham and Nicks add dreamy harmonies.

The song became her second hit single, and she knew she had created something magical, saying, “I heard this incredible sound — our three voices — and said to myself, ‘Is this me singing?’ I couldn’t believe how great this three-voice harmony was. My skin turned to goose flesh, and I wondered how long this feeling was going to last.”

3. “You Make Loving Fun” (1977)

The hits just kept on coming with Rumours, Fleetwood Mac’s blockbuster 1977 album. The Top 10 single “You Make Loving Fun” was inspired by McVie’s affair with the band’s lighting technician, and like “Say You Love Me,” it showcased her brilliant ability to write upbeat love songs.

While the song is all about McVie’s joyfully illicit romance, drummer Mick Fleetwood joked that when it came to her bandmate and then-husband, “Knowing John, he probably thought it was about one of her dogs.”

4. “Don’t Stop” (1977)

“Don’t Stop” is the most anthemic of Christine McVie songs, and its message of forging ahead and looking to the future has resonated with countless listeners over the years.

Once again, Christine made romantic drama into chart-topping gold, as she wrote the song, on which she shared vocals with Buckingham, during her breakup with John McVie. That created some awkwardness in the band, as McVie was playing bass on a song about being left behind, but he claimed to not know it was about him.

5. “Songbird” (1977)

While many Christine McVie songs are light and fun to sing along with, “Songbird” is a haunting ballad. As John McVie said, “When Christine played ‘Songbird,’ grown men would weep. I did every night.”

McVie wrote the song as if by magic: In an interview with People, she recalled how the song came to her fully-formed in the middle of the night, leading her to write it in just half an hour. As she put it, “I don’t know where that came from. I wished it would happen more often, but it hasn’t.”

“Songbird” was so special that it became the title of her 2022 solo compilation album, which would be her final release before her passing.

6. “Think About Me” (1979)

After the huge success of Rumours, Fleetwood Mac went in a more experimental direction with their 1979 album Tusk.

“Think About Me” is one of the album’s more mainstream songs, thanks to McVie’s spot-on songwriting, but she was always self-deprecating, saying, “I’m a pretty basic love-song writer. Pretty basic relationship writer. I’d be the last one to say it for myself, but I’ve been told that I have a way of saying the obvious in a non-obvious way.”

7. “Hold Me” (1982)

In 1982, Fleetwood Mac returned to softer sounds with their album Mirage. McVie and Buckingham shared vocals on this crowd-pleasingly romantic tune, which was inspired by McVie’s relationship with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.

As MTV had just started, Fleetwood Mac made a music video for the song, but because of growing tensions in the band, the shoot didn’t go very well, with the video’s producer saying, “Christine McVie was fed up with all of them. They were a fractious bunch.”

8. “Everywhere” (1987)

“Everywhere” is a piece of shimmering ’80s pop that conjures up the feeling of new love. Once again, McVie drew from her own romantic life, as she married musician Eduardo Quintela not long before recording it.

The song topped Billboard‘s Adult Contemporary chart, and while it wasn’t quite as big a hit as some of her other songs, it stood out for its dreamy production and lyrics that came straight from the heart.

9. “Little Lies” (1987)

“Little Lies” was Fleetwood Mac’s final US top ten hit, and it was a good one to go out on, thanks to its mix of airy harmonies and pointed lyrics.

While Quintela had a cowriting credit on the song, McVie noted that he didn’t contribute much, saying, “‘Little Lies’ was very much my song, and it’s not about me, and it’s not about Eddy. It’s just a song I wrote, lying out by my pool with a pad and paper and that’s what I came up with. Counter-vocals written across Lindsey’s tune and… I just kind of made it up.”

Christine McVie solo projects

Christine McVie released her debut solo album, Christine Perfect (yep, Perfect was her real maiden name!) in 1970, shortly before she joined Fleetwood Mac. In a 1980 interview, she admitted, “When I made that record, I wasn’t really sure about my talent, or about what direction I wanted to go in musically… I didn’t really feel artistically together until I joined Fleetwood Mac.”

Her next album, Christine McVie, came out in 1984, and produced her only top 10 solo hit, “Got a Hold on Me.” Lindsey Buckingham played guitar on the song, so it wasn’t much of a departure from the music she was best known for.

As she told Rolling Stone of her second solo album, “Maybe it isn’t the most adventurous album in the world, but I wanted to be honest and please my own ears with it.”

McVie’s final solo album, In the Meantime, came out in 2004, and received mixed reviews. She had complicated feelings about it, telling the Los Angeles Times, “It had some good songs on it, but I went about it all wrong. I did it the wrong way, with the wrong people, I didn’t want to fly, I didn’t want to promote it. I just did it in my garage and nothing happened with it. That caused a certain amount of angst, and then I just stopped.”

McVie eventually returned to Fleetwood Mac in 2014, and in 2017, she and Buckingham released an album as a duo, Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie. The album earned praise for its classic Fleetwood Mac sound, and she said that she and Buckingham had a “very natural” rapport and always shared a “musical connection.”

Christine McVie’s solo work may not be quite as well known as Nicks’ but it still possesses her signature simple yet spot-on songwriting and singular voice.