What Makes You Think You're the One

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"What Makes You Think You're the One"
Song by Fleetwood Mac
from the album Tusk
Released1979
Recorded1979
Genre Rock
Length3:32
Label Warner Bros.
Songwriter(s) Lindsey Buckingham
Producer(s) Fleetwood Mac, Richard Dashut, Ken Caillat

"What Makes You Think You're the One" is a song by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released in 1979. Composed and sung by guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, it was one of his nine songs that appeared on the Tusk album. The song was also included on the US 2002 and UK 2009 editions of The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac . [1]

Contents

Background

In February, Buckingham entered Studio D of The Village Recorder with a JVC ghetto blaster. After playing producers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut a demo of "What Makes You Think You're the One" through some JBL speakers in the control room, Buckingham suggested that they create a new version using the JVC deck's input as the recording device. Caillat pushed back against this, contending that the boombox would make the song excessively compressed, but Buckingham insisted that they use the device to emulate the distorted sounds of old rock and roll recordings. [2]

Fleetwood set up his drums in the corner of Studio D and recorded the song with Buckingham using the boombox as the recording device for the drums. [3] Fleetwood said that they "opened the mics up so that it was recording straight onto tape, and that overload and compression is straight off the ghetto blaster. It gave it that "suck and push" sound". [4] More conventional studio microphones were also placed throughout the studio to give Caillat and Dashut further options during the mixing process. [2]

Buckingham and Fleetwood stated that they created "What Makes You Think You're the One" as a two-piece without any other band members, [3] [5] although Caillat recalled that John McVie was also present in the studio during the song's recording sessions. For the song's original tracking, Buckingham was on piano and Fleetwood used an 18-inch Paiste China cymbal in his drum set. Caillat posited that the song was directed at Stevie Nicks and that Buckingham "imitate[d] Stevie's distinctive vibrato, giving it a bleating, goat like quality, and her rudimentary piano quality, which he knew made her self conscious". [2]

Critical reception

Ed Harrison of Billboard identified "What Makes You Think You're the One" as a "sarcastic and light-hearted" song with "steady" instrumentation. [6] Paste ranked the song number 26 on its list of the 30 greatest Fleetwood Mac songs, commenting that it sounds "like a demo, [which] is perfect for Buckingham’s ragged, drug-addled vocals". [7] Rolling Stone said that "Buckingham rocks out with the raw spirit of a freewheeling garage band" on "What Makes You Think You're the One" and also placed the song at number 36 on its list of the 50 greatest Fleetwood Mac songs. [5]

Live performances

"What Makes You Think You're the One" was played on the Tusk Tour. [2] A November 1979 live recording from St. Louis was included on the super deluxe edition of Tusk. [8] Christine McVie played piano for live performances of "What Make Makes You Think You're the One" despite not appearing in any capacity on the song's studio version. She remarked that "'What Makes You Think You're The One' from Tusk is especially tough to play. You have to keep crashing away at chords through the whole thing. By the time it's finished my wrists are like spaghetti." [9]

Personnel

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References

  1. ↑ Wild, David (2002). The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac (Liner Notes). Fleetwood Mac. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Records Inc. p. 13.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Caillat, Ken; Rojas, Hernan (2019). Get Tusked: The Inside Story of Fleetwood Mac's Most Anticipated Album. Guilford, Connecticut: Backbeat Books. pp. 209–213. ISBN   978-1-4930-5983-6.
  3. 1 2 Fleetwood, Mick; Bozza, Anthony (October 2014). Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac. New York: Little, Brown And Company. p. 231. ISBN   978-0-316-40342-9.
  4. ↑ "Modern Drummer: Hot Products! Great Gear For '03" (PDF). Modern Drummer: 120. June 2023.
  5. 1 2 Weingarten, Christopher; et al. (2 May 2022). "Fleetwood Mac's 50 Greatest Songs". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  6. ↑ Harrison, Ed (27 October 1979). "Closeup: Fleetwood Mac Tusk Does Wonders" (PDF). Rolling Stone. Retrieved 1 January 2025– via World Radio History.
  7. ↑ Mitchell, Matt (7 August 2023). "The 30 Greatest Fleetwood Mac Songs". Paste . Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  8. ↑ "Fleetwood Mac, Tusk: Deluxe Edition". Rhino. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  9. ↑ Doerschuk, Bob (October 1980). "From the Archive: Christine McVie - KeyboardMag". www.keyboardmag.com. Archived from the original on 10 July 2015. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
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