Christine McVie to Release ‘Songbird’ Album
Christine McVie said she has an upcoming release of a solo album that contains new arrangements of some of her biggest hits.
In a new interview with pop artist Gary Barlow on the BBC Radio 2 show We Write the Songs, the Fleetwood Mac member said the project was produced by Beatles colleague Glyn Johns and featured input from Grammy-winning composer and conductor Vince Mendoza.
“I’ve just finished an album which is a compilation of my biggest hits,” McVie said. “But they’ve all been produced again by Glyn Johns [with] Vince Mendoza on strings, who does this fantastic version of ‘Songbird.’” Noting that the new versions “all sound completely different,” she added, “That’s out in June this year, and it’s just called Songbird.” Asked if she would tour to promote the release, McVie replied: “That I daren’t comment on yet! I’m very cagey about things like that.”
McVie rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 2014 following a 16-year absence after a conversation with Mick Fleetwood led to a frank response from Lindsey Buckingham. “I just needed to get away,” she said of her departure in 1998.
“I was quite happy for the first eight, 10 years, just living my life in the country in Kent. I had a big old rambling manor house that I lived in, and I was loving my life. Then I just started to kind of miss the band again, and it was actually me who tackled Mick and said, ‘How would you feel if I were to come back?’ And he went and spoke to all the other guys because they’d all been still playing this whole time. You can quote Lindsay as having said, ‘Well, she better bloody well mean it. If she wants to come back, she better bloody well stay!’ Or something like that. But I did. I went back, and it was great – those final years were great.”
Asked if the band’s most recent tour was their “lap of honor,” McVie said she didn't think of it in that way. "None of us know what’s happening with Fleetwood Mac," she noted. "With COVID and everything else, we’ve got to all of us be very careful. But you know, this is not necessarily the end of the tale, so maybe the lap of honor is yet to come."
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso