Song
Go Your Own Way
Fleetwood Mac
Album:
Rumours
Song Meaning of Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, and what it is about
"Go Your Own Way" is a song by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac from their eleventh studio album, Rumours in 1977.
"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…".
Buckingham picked up an electric guitar and chugged the chord progression, and in what he described as "a stream of consciousness", he sang the opening line, "Loving you isn't the right thing to do".
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".
On "Street Fighting Man", the drumbeat alternates between the tom-tom and the snare drum, which Buckingham wanted Fleetwood to play on "Go Your Own Way"'s verses.
Fleetwood would ultimately come up with his own variation of the "Street Fighting Man" groove, where he played across the tom-toms while hitting the bass drum on the middle beat.
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."
Writing the song helped Buckingham come to terms with reality, despite his fallout with Nicks.
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."
Song Lyrics of Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac
Loving you
Isn't the right thing to do
How can I ever change things that I feel?
If I could
Baby I'd give you my world
How can I
When you won't take it from me?
You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way
Tell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up
Shacking up's all you wanna do
If I could
Baby I'd give you my world
Open up
Everything's waiting for you
You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way
Release Date
1976
Songwriter/s
Lindsey Buckingham
Producer/s
Fleetwood Mac, Richard Dashut, Ken Caillat
Label/s
Warner Bros
