Fleetwood Mac, 'Fleetwood Mac'--11 speeds

Fleetwood Mac’s success in the mid and late 1970s was a phenomenon. People of every taste could come together and quietly decide that Fleetwood Mac was “cool.” While acts like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson were huge “cross-over” acts where people of any race liked music that is ‘generally seen’ in communities of another race, Fleetwood Mac was the band at the time the was “cross-over” where people of any type of social group or background accepted them.
On a personal note, I was in 7th grade—about 12 years old—when this album came out, and I remember this being the single album that all the “geeky” kids and all the “cool” kids could agree, if in silence: this is sophisticated relaxing music. They brought a bright, fresh spirit with them—a reason Bill Clinton asked them to reunite—and in fact use the song highlighted below, Don’t Stop, as campaign theme music as the campaign theme song in 1992 respectively. It was the contemporary version of the Democrat standard: “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
As far as using the BPM column on your digital music program, I posted some screen shots above of the different configurations that are possible when proper speed—for this album, this entry is the only place I could find online to obtain accurate song speed—in beats per minute—of every track. Imagine this every day situation: you find out that you are going to leave in 10 minutes on a long car trip and are looking to burn a new CD or build a new Playlist for a trip with a new friend who mentions that they are 'huge fans of Fleetwood Mac’s self entitled album and Rumours.' You want to impress. You want to have fun with the music. You want to feel that hard, driving beat. Would you rather use the screen on the top, which simply lists the song by appearance as the songs appear on each album, or the screen beneath which lay out all 22 songs in order of ascending speed? The great thing about iTunes and most of the rest is that you need not choose! Play around with reverse alphabetization of album names--whatever--the BPM or Speed element is just a great new toy--except (1) it's free, (2) it lasts forever and (3) only gets stronger as you use it, like a body part (brain) and not a toy, like the computer screen upon which you are reading this.

Below are the speeds of every song on Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album, where numbers represent beats per minute, all measurements by Liam Schneider:

1. Monday Morning, 107
meanemotion=lust

2. Warm Ways, 92
meanemotion=enthusiasm

3. Blue Letter, 149
meanemotion=mixed fast

4. Rhiannon, 129
meanemotion=mixed fast

5. Over My Head, 101
meanemotion=natural

6. Crystal, 41
meanemotion=surreal

7. Say You Love Me, 128
meanemotion=victory

8. Landslide, 80
meanemotion=lonely

9. World Turning, 115
meanemotion=foreboding

10. Sugar Daddy, 122
meanemotion=victory

10. I'm So Afraid, 63
meanemotion=ceremony.


For more about the correlation between speed in beats per minute and emotional expression in music speed, please visit meanspeed.com.


Ian Schneider
meanspeed.com
March 27, 2007