Best Lindsey Buckingham Albums: The Fleetwood Mac Guitarist’s Discography, Ranked

8: ‘Under The Skin’ (2006)

“Reading the paper, I saw a review,” Buckingham sings on Under The Skin’s opening song, Not Too Late. “Said I was a visionary, but nobody knew.” These lines feel revealing of the man – proud yet occasionally frustrated; embracing outsider status while, at the same time, being a central cog in one of the biggest rock bands of all time.

Under The Skin arrived 14 whole years after the release of Buckingham’s previous album, Out Of The Cradle, and the passage of time is audible. There is a real rootsiness to this record, which largely eschews the consciously technical approach of Buckingham’s previous albums in favour of keeping his voice and guitar central. That doesn’t mean the songs are less intricate, however; his lyrics, and the spellbinding guitar techniques he employs, absolutely shine throughout. Perhaps it’s in the vocal arrangements where Buckingham is at his most audacious on this album: overlapping, unusual, they’re an audible evocation of his quicksilver mind.

Must hear: Show You How

7: ‘Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie’ (2017)

Christine McVie may have produced fewer solo albums than her Fleetwood Mac bandmates, yet her work was shot through with a precious vulnerability, making each release a treat. “For me, this is all a fresh beginning,” she said of this collaborative album with Buckingham. “I’ve rediscovered my love for writing and my love for music. It seemed to have evolved quite organically because I’ve been sending Lindsey some rough demos, and he’s refined them and shaped them into some of our best material ever.”

Indeed he did. Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie’s gestation began in 2014, a point when both musicians were in Fleetwood Mac, and although the album started with McVie’s demos, soon Buckingham was writing new material especially for the project. The longtime colleagues gave one another confidence, and the mutual support – along with all-out joy – can clearly be heard in the finished record. Buckingham’s sophisticated guitar work and sturdy vocals are in fine form, while McVie showcases her extraordinary songcraft throughout. And, although the album is jointly credited to McVie and Buckingham, it also features two other classic Fleetwood Mac alumni – John McVie and Mick Fleetwood.

Sadly, this was to be the final album for Christine McVie, who passed away in 2022. “Christine McVie’s sudden passing is profoundly heartbreaking,” Buckingham said, in his tribute to her. Not only were she and I part of the magical family of Fleetwood Mac, to me Christine was a musical comrade, a friend, a soul mate, a sister. For over four decades, we helped each other create a beautiful body of work and a lasting legacy that continues to resonate today.”

Must hear: Lay Down For Free

6: ‘Seeds We Sow’ (2011)

Many of the best Lindsey Buckingham albums featured songs that he had written, at least in rough form, way before starting the recording process. Sometimes years would go by between Buckingham conceiving of a track and committing it to tape. Not so with the songs on Seeds We Sow, which were largely written during recording itself. “I wrote them out as snippets of ideas right before I went in to start the actual recording,” he said. “She Smiled Sweetly was the only thing I had recorded previously; it had been sitting around for a while, waiting to find a home.”

The freshness of Seeds We Sow is there in Buckingham’s guitar: his fingerpicking has never sounded more alive. First using it in earnest on Fleetwood Mac’s 1987 single Big Love, Buckingham increasingly employed this folk-inspired technique on his solo albums. Fingerpicking is expressive and highly skilled, without the clichés of more conventional rock guitar. “It’s an area of playing that I’ve become very interested in and tried to expound upon, especially since I’ve done more and more solo albums,” Buckingham said in 2011, when promoting Seeds We Sow. “It seems to be working out.”

Must hear: Seeds We Sow

5: ‘Lindsey Buckingham’ (2021)

Lindsey Buckingham’s later-period songwriting feels more philosophical, and less reactive, than his earlier work. While not exactly mellow, there is a new deliberation to his material, a commitment to seeing different sides from his own perspective in the lyrics. His sublime guitar playing is also used to achieve different ends – subtlety, ambiguity, empathy – as well as being a driver of the song. “You want to be good at your craft,” Buckingham once remarked, “but you don’t want to wear all the construction on your sleeve.”

Yet his work on this entry among the best Lindsey Buckingham albums is also highly accessible. “I said to myself, ‘I want to make a pop album,’ whatever that means,” Buckingham said in 2021. “It was a way of circling back, hopefully in a timely and appropriate way.” On Lindsey Buckingham, “circling back” meant more concise, listener-friendly material that nevertheless drew on Buckingham’s recent personal circumstances – physical illness and marital difficulties. “There was perhaps kind of a subconscious sense that crept into the writing of a lot of these songs,” he has said. “Like postcards to my future self.”

Must hear: Power Down

4: ‘Law And Order’ (1981)

Lindsey Buckingham has said that Law And Order wouldn’t have existed, at least not in the way it sounds, without Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, released in 1979. Tusk was a fascinating album that drew from the post-punk musical environment, and its stature has increased over the years; yet it was a sharp contrast to 1977’s Rumours and failed to match its predecessor’s commercial success. As Tusk’s creative force, Buckingham was blamed.

He knew he would not have the scope to experiment within the confines of the band’s machine in the same way again. “I was the one who departed from the previously established Fleetwood Mac format,” he said back in 1981, reflecting on how Tusk was received. “There already seems to be a little pressure to return more to that sound.” This Fleetwood Mac did, with 1982’s Mirage. But Buckingham’s wild spirit animal would not be so easily tamed.

Law And Order, therefore, can be heard as the ghost follow-up to Tusk and the dark shadow of Mirage. However – and perhaps because it was created when Buckingham felt indicted for Tusk’s reception – Buckingham now says he has “a bad attitude” about his official solo debut. “Law And Order was a bit, shall we say, sarcastic as a body of work, a bit camp, maybe a bit too camp, almost verging on a comedy album in some ways,” he said in 2018. Yet there is an immediacy to the record, something rare for Buckingham, who would increasingly let songs and albums gestate for years and years. Law And Order, while acerbic, is hook-laden and playful, too.

He was certainly in the mood to defy expectations with this standout among the best Lindsey Buckingham albums. “I hate turning on the radio and being able to guess what an entire song is going to sound like in the first five seconds,” he said early in 1981, just before starting the Law And Order sessions. “I don’t mean there aren’t good songs on the radio – there are – but don’t you get tired of hearing that same approach over and over again?”

Must hear: Trouble

3: ‘Buckingham Nicks’ (1973)

New Year’s Eve 1974 is one of rock’s great pivots. The moment when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac, it saw the band’s dynamic change forever, their turbulent line-up settling around two personalities who became an enormous part of both the band’s mega-stardom and its restiveness.

Buckingham and Nicks had first met in 1966, and began performing together two years later, in a band called Fritz. When that group split, the pair recorded demos together in a spare room at the coffee plant owned by Buckingham’s father. “I had been playing guitar since I was about seven, and many of my sensibilities were intact already,” Buckingham said of his earliest musical endeavours. “Most of the people I knew were picking up a guitar for the first time because of the 1967 scene, so there was a difference between how I was looking at the stuff and what I was pulling from it.”

The album that emerged, Buckingham Nicks, did draw from the contemporary – from folk-rock, psychedelia and the progressive sounds of Los Angeles – but there was definitely something else, too: a care and cultivation that helped even these early Buckingham-Nicks recordings stand apart. Buckingham and Nicks share lead vocal duties across the album’s ten songs, and both get a very equitable four solo writing credits each, alongside one cover (an instrumental, Django) and the album’s jointly-written closer, Frozen Love. They are definitely a duo in its best sense, with each musician supporting the other and providing unselfish conditions within which their partner can shine. Buckingham was already displaying skill in creating emotional and musical atmosphere; Nicks’ flair for melody and drama is also apparent in these very early songs. Outstanding session players, such as Waddy Wachtel on guitar, ensure this low-key release sounds extremely polished.

What’s also genuinely special about Buckingham Nicks is hearing the tenderness between the pair, who were then in a romantic relationship. They would each write far more famous – and far unhappier – songs about each other, but, perhaps more than any other entry among the best Lindsey Buckingham albums, this record captures something hopeful. Their love wouldn’t last, but Buckingham Nicks is a snapshot of its ephemeral warmth.

Must hear: Don’t Let Me Down Again

2: ‘Go Insane’ (1984)

On his second solo album, Go Insane, Buckingham bends electronic equipment to his will. He employed the LinnDrum machine and the Fairlight synth, saying, “I certainly can’t play drums as well as a Linn can. If I wanted to play something myself, it was just as easy to do it on the Fairlight ’cause the sounds are already there and you don’t have to set up a whole kit.”

The result is one of the great electronic rock albums – and a collection that features many of the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs. Go Insane stands alongside the work of Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel in its interest in deconstruction, sampling and manipulating conventional sounds. Buckingham’s sound palette is wide and deep, notably on D.W. Suite which uses a 19th-century lap harp and incorporates a Scottish folk song alongside the ultra-contemporary electronica.

This album may be Buckingham’s most experimental, yet he combined this adventurous urge with stone-cold catchy pop (particularly the title track and I Must Go). He was the complete visionary on this project, analogous to Prince’s polymorphous approach: writing, producing, recording and playing virtually every instrument in this complex masterpiece. “Working on your own, especially when you play everything yourself, is more like painting,” Buckingham said in 1984, explaining his approach on Go Insane. “You’ve got a canvas that’s blank, and you do this and you do that. It’s far more intuitive and personal.”

Must hear: D.W. Suite

1: ‘Out Of The Cradle’ (1992)

While the strength of Go Insane is its jagged unpredictability, Out Of The Cradle finds power in unity. It’s layered and intricate while also maintaining an airiness and sensitivity. “The whole atmosphere around this album is of optimism, but bittersweet about leaving one situation and moving on, feeling good about it and yet kinda scared,” Buckingham told Q magazine in 1992. “It took a little time for the dust to settle.”

The situation Buckingham was referring to, of course, was leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1987. Amid Tango In The Night’s blockbuster success, he walked away from the group, and Out Of The Cradle became Buckingham’s first solo album to be released without its creator holding his concurrent role within the band. “When I was writing these songs they came from a very personal world, but as they emerged I began to see that many of them could be taken in more than one way,” Buckingham said in 1992. “I’d like to leave it like that, to give people the freedom to get whatever they can out of the songs.”

Buckingham worked on the album constantly. Its creation was a sunrise-to-sunset effort, week following week following week, the songwriter sequestering himself in his home studio. In a complete break from Go Insane, the album refocuses on Buckingham’s guitar, particularly acoustic guitar. The tactic paid off handsomely. Each track – highlights include Wrong, Street Of Dreams, Don’t Look Down and the brilliant single Countdown – combine deep feeling with a genuine welcome to the listener. Every listen is like a new excavation, tiny moments of diamond precision revealing themselves, sometimes years after first hearing. It’s his greatest work, and it tops our list of the best Lindsey Buckingham albums with ease.

Must hear: Countdown

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