The “Jeopardy!” Twitter account posted today’s Final Jeopardy question with a cute reminder to Fleetwood Mac fans.
“Don’t stop thinking about today’s Final Jeopardy! @fleetwoodmac,” “Jeopardy!” tweeted Wednesday night.
The question was, “The title of this huge hit 1977 album was the idea of the bass player, who specified that it should be spelled the British way.”
The correct answer was, “What is ‘Rumours’?”
‘Jeopardy!’ Answer Was One of the Best-Selling Albums Ever
The 1977 Fleetwood Mac album sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums ever. It topped the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S. Four songs off the album came out as singles: “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” Go Your Own Way” and “You Make Loving Fun.” Each of the singles made it to the Top 10 on U.S. charts.
In “Visions, Dreams and Rumours,” a biography of Stevie Nicks, author Zoe Howe wrote of “Rumours”: “Whether flirtatious, confessional or downright confrontational, everyone’s songs together simply sounded ‘like a bunch of rumours’, as [bass player] John McVie noted. It was the perfect title, and it also wryly referred to the flurry of sensationalist gossip about them in the music business and the press.”
Last year, Rolling Stone ranked “Rumours” the seventh greatest album of all time on its “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list. Which may have inspired “Jeopardy!” to include it on the show.
The Making of the Album Was Marred by Turmoil
During the recording sessions for the album, two couples in the band (John McVie and singer-keyboardist Christine McVie, and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks) broke up. There was constant partying and drug use surrounding the band.
“You Make Loving Fun” was Christine McVie’s ode to her new boyfriend, Fleetwood Mac’s lighting designer, but John McVie played the song right along with her in the recording sessions. Meanwhile, Nicks wrote “Dreams” in a small room buried deep in the Record Plant in about ten minutes.
“[In ‘Go Your Own Way’] Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I’m] singing about the rain washing you clean,” Nicks later said, per Rolling Stone. “We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing.”
Who could have guessed in the midst of all that drama that they would end up creating a classic album? But as is so often the case with artists, their private pain became grist for public consumption. And the rest is pop culture history, as the “Jeopardy!” clue attests.
