If All of Christine McVie’s Songs Were About Her, ‘I’d Have Killed Myself by Now’
Contrary to popular belief, not all of Christine McVie’s songs are about her personal life. If all of her hits were, the Fleetwood Mac keyboardist said she would’ve had to “kill” herself.
Christine McVie’s autobiographical songs
While many of McVie’s songs seem autobiographical, they’re not. However, there are a couple that she did base on her life. On Rumours‘ “You Make Loving Fun,” McVie wrote about her affair with Fleetwood Mac’s lighting director Curry Grant.
McVie had her affair with Grant while married to Fleetwood Mac’s bassist, John McVie. “Knowing John, he probably thought it was about one of her dogs,” said the group’s drummer Mick Fleetwood (via Songfacts).
The recording of Rumours was a dark time for the band, who was tittering on the edge of breaking up throughout most of it. However, Fleetwood Mac’s songbird looked at the positive through the darkness. This is why her other hit, “Don’t Stop,” is mostly autobiographical.
“It would definitely be a great song for an insurance company,” McVie once joked (per Rolling Stone). “But I’m definitely not a pessimist. I’m basically a love-song writer.”
McVie’s songs aren’t all autobiographical
During her time in Fleetwood Mac and her solo career, McVie wrote some of the best unconventional love songs. “That’s the trick about writing a love song,” she said (per the BBC). “You can’t just go, ‘I love you, you love me, where are you, I miss you.’ There always has to be a bit of a twist.”
However, some fans thought McVie wrote those love songs about her own love life. That’s not completely true. During an interview, Uncut pointed out, “People tend to scrutinize your songs – especially the Rumours-era songs – for autobiographical clues.”
McVie replied, “But they’re not all about … if they were all about me personally, I’d have killed myself by now. I always write about unrequited love or love in some form or another. I don’t write about politics or the weather. I do include the sun and the sea quite a lot. They are songs from somebody else’s point of view sometimes. I find that refreshing to think along those lines. It gives me a different track to go down.”
McVie knew her songs sounded personal, but they weren’t her thoughts about someone else.
The singer-songwriter understood that some fans thought some of her songs were about her personal life
McVie understood that some people thought her songs were autobiographical.
“I think that’s certainly true with Rumours and I think people have come to look at the rest of our songs that way. I could be wrong,” McVie told Uncut. “But… it’s true they all are intensely personal. But from my point of view, they’re not directly from me to somebody else per se. Sometimes they just evoke an emotion in somebody that they can relate to.”
McVie’s songs will resonate with all romantics for decades to come.
