Best Lindsey Buckingham Solo Songs: 20 Non-Fleetwood Mac Essentials

19: This Is The Time (from ‘Out Of The Cradle’, 1992)

Lindsey Buckingham can be his own hardest critic. He said in 1992 that his first two solo albums “did the job of defining myself, as something other than what I was in Fleetwood Mac”, but he also felt that they were made in too tight a timeframe. He consciously sought to address this with 1992’s Out Of The Cradle, allowing that album to take as long as it needed – which ended up being three years.

This Is The Time is a great example of how this open-minded and open-ended approach paid off. One of the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs of the era, it alternates between a gauzy haze which is almost shoegaze-like in its rhythms, and a raucous anger, fitting right in with early-90s alt-rock. “You may start with a certain intent, you may think you have a song written,” Buckingham told VH1 in 1992, “but when you start slapping the colours on the canvas, if you’re doing it properly the canvas will take on a life of its own and start to lead you off in directions you never expected to go.”

18: Show You How (from ‘Under The Skin’, 2006)

The music video for Show You How is one of Lindsey Buckingham’s most unusual – lo-res, jerky footage dominates, and it’s often unclear as to what the viewer is looking at. The clip suits Buckingham’s uncanny vocals and ambiguous lyrics, of a “shadow singer” who will “linger in places no one ever goes”. Buckingham has said that he had to argue for the sound he wanted on Under The Skin (he has claimed he was originally asked “to make a hybrid, normal album”). Show You How is a perfect example of how sticking to his vision worked for him, veering well away from rock into something altogether less graspable.

17: Gift Of Screws (from ‘Gift Of Screws’, 2008)

The gestation of Lindsey Buckingham’s fifth album, Gift Of Screws, was a long and complicated one. Many of its songs had been written years previously, as part of a planned 2001 Buckingham solo album (itself titled Gift Of Screws), yet this album was never officially released. Instead, several tracks on the shelved project were recorded by Fleetwood Mac, for 2003’s Say You Will. The remaining songs were then released by Buckingham on Under The Skin and the retooled 2008 Gift Of Screws.

Buckingham considered this material “the best that I’ve ever done on my own, or with Fleetwood Mac”. A real rocker, Gift Of Screws’ title track is rawer than much of Buckingham’s other output. It was influenced by poet Emily Dickinson’s Time And Eternity, and features both Mick Fleetwood and Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie.

16: Time Bomb Town (from the ‘Back To The Future’ soundtrack, 1985)

Featured (briefly) in the film Back To The Future – it’s the song played on the radio as Marty McFly wakes up – Time Bomb Town is a fantastic, yet unusual, number among the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs. A galloping tune, featuring a high, twangy guitar and almost gasping vocals, it has led fans to speculate that the “time bomb town” in question is Los Angeles – a fair guess, given that the city is also the topic of many other Buckingham songs.

15: Don’t Look Down (from ‘Out Of The Cradle’, 1992)

Always the experimenter, Buckingham eschewed a traditional drum kit in favour of cardboard boxes on Don’t Look Down. It is a typically individualistic move that gives the track an eccentric, homemade undercurrent. “It’s a song that always resonates with me,” Buckingham has said. This is unsurprising because Don’t Look Down is about that euphoric feeling when you’re about to do something unexpected, particularly when you’re at a low ebb. Buckingham has never feared risk-taking, and some of the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs have come from facing up to shock and pain.

14: Stars Are Crazy (from ‘Seeds We Sow’, 2011)

Apart from a cover of The Rolling Stones’ She Smiled Sweetly, all the other songs on the Seeds We Sow album were written solely by Lindsey Buckingham. That is, except the stunning Stars Are Crazy, for which San Jose singer-songwriter Lisa Dewey received a co-writing credit. A Buckingham fan, Dewey went to a Buckingham solo gig in 2006 and handed him a few of her self-released CDs. Buckingham enjoyed one of her songs, With You On My Mind, so much that he reworked it into Stars Are Crazy – and made sure Dewey was properly credited and financially compensated.

The call about Stars Are Crazy came at exactly the right time for Dewey, both in terms of kudos and more practical matters. “I’m really excited that I’ll be able to take whatever income comes from this, and as an artist, put it right back into my music,” she said in 2011. “And be able to go back and do my music full time again, because I haven’t been able to in a couple of years.”

13: Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind (from ‘Under The Skin’, 2006)

Although Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind was released on 2006’s Under The Skin, in interviews Buckingham has pointed to a much earlier genesis for the song’s lyrics. This would make sense, as it is a lyrically raw meditation on yearning for fatherhood when a partner doesn’t feel the same urge. It’s also, potentially, a reflection on the positive power of fostering and adoption in a world full of children “covered in pain”.

Buckingham did become a father (and had done so by the time this song was commercially released), but children came relatively late in life, when Buckingham was aged 48. He now has a son and two daughters. “I think it was good not having children too young,” he reflected in 2011. “I’ve seen a lot of parents not really be there for their kids, so I’m glad that gift came when I was ready.”

12: Blind Love (from ‘Lindsey Buckingham’, 2021)

Buckingham’s self-titled seventh album was released in 2021, following the COVID-19 pandemic and at a time when Buckingham was recovering from heart surgery. His goal with the album was to create a set of songs that “resemble art more than pop”, as he put it; Blind Love is one of the album’s warmest tunes, feeling almost doo-wop-inspired. Buckingham has acknowledged that the album has among its themes “the challenges couples face in long-term relationships”, and Blind Love tackles these head-on, considering betrayal, denial and the gnawing suspicion that love is coming to an end.

11: Soul Drifter (from ‘Out Of The Cradle’, 1992)

This lush song was written many years before it was released – composed while the other members of Fleetwood Mac were in Buckingham’s house mixing 1987’s Tango In The Night album. Buckingham broke with his tried-and-tested writing methods for Soul Drifter. Instead of his usual approach, creating the music before the lyrics, he wrote the words first. For Soul Drifter’s style and tone, he consciously aped the quick, hit-making approach of the old Tin Pan Alley songwriters, looking back to the music his parents loved. “I do think there’s a lot to be looked at in that type of music,” he said in 2015. “I think there’s a lot of validity, just looking at that stuff and appreciating it. Especially if it’s part of your background.”

10: Johnny Stew (from ‘Law And Order’, 1981)

Buckingham has described Law And Order, his first solo album, as “kind of a reaction to the political climate in a post-Tusk environment”. While Buckingham has latterly felt less comfortable with Law And Order’s sarcastic, irony-laden tone, the track Johnny Stew stands out among the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs – it’s one of his most joyful tracks, almost Frank Zappa-ish in its impishness. Johnny Stew is John Stewart, of Buckingham heroes The Kingston Trio; several years on from the song’s release, Stewart answered with his own tribute song, the charming Liddy Buck, written about Buckingham’s desire to musically stretch out from Fleetwood Mac.

9: Twisted (with Stevie Nicks) (from the ‘Twister’ soundtrack, 1996)

Twisted, from the soundtrack of 90s disaster movie Twister, was written 30 years after Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham met at high school. Seven years after that meeting, their debut album together, Buckingham Nicks, began the careers of two of rock’s most fascinating mavericks.

Twisted was released while both were on hiatus from Fleetwood Mac. Nicks wrote the song, and has reflected that, although it was ostensibly about extreme weather, “I realised that this really was MY story. It was about people who had extreme jobs… like chasing tornados, or being in a rock band.” Nicks asked Buckingham to produce the track, and he also shared lead vocals with her. The result is a mellow, gorgeous song that brings out the best in both of them.

8: Seeds We Sow (from ‘Seeds We Sow’, 2011)

In contrast to Gift Of Screws and Under The Skin – both albums with songs that dated back several years – Seeds We Sow was a spontaneous album. “I wrote them out as snippets of ideas right before I went in to start the actual recording,” Buckingham said of its songs in 2011. “When you’re working on your own, you can start with the smallest of ideas. You don’t have to go in with something as fleshed out as you would if you’re working with others.”

The album’s title track is notable for Buckingham’s intense use of the fingerpicking guitar technique, something which he first experimented with in the 80s, when performing Big Love by Fleetwood Mac. “It’s an area of playing that I’ve become very interested in and tried to expound upon,” Buckingham said at the time, “especially since I’ve done more and more solo albums. It seems to be working out.”

7: Did You Miss Me (from ‘Gift Of Screws’, 2008)

“As an artist I’m still, for better or worse, clinging to my idealism and to my sense that there is still much to be said,” Lindsey Buckingham said of Gift Of Screws. “This album is a culmination of that.” The melodic gem Did You Miss Me is easily one of the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs, and Buckingham’s wife, Kristen Messner, received a co-writing credit for it. (A photographer, Messner also created the intense images of Buckingham that grace the Gift Of Screws album cover.)

Did You Miss Me was released as the first single from Gift Of Screws, although Buckingham prefers to leave the business of choosing possible hits to others. “If [the record company] want to pick one song or another song, that’s their job,” he said in 2008. “It hasn’t had a lot to do with what I consider my solo work. I think success comes from the feeling that you have created something.”

6: Go Insane (from ‘Go Insane’, 1984)

Go Your Own Way, one of Fleetwood Mac’s most famous songs – and one of the greatest breakup anthems of all time – was written by Lindsey Buckingham about the acrimonious split between him and Stevie Nicks. The song Go Insane, released seven years later, focused on the same theme – although the tone is noticeably different. There’s a bitterness and frustration within its driven pop sound, yet it’s also about learning to deal with the longer-term consequences of a failed relationship – particularly when you still have to see your ex-partner regularly (because they are in the same band as you are).

“In order to get work done, I had to go through this elaborate exercise in denial – leaving whole areas of baggage on the other side of the room, compartmentalise feelings… no time to get closure, to work things out… working in a very highly charged and ambivalent environment,” Buckingham explained in 2008. “So the go insane thing – would just be whenever I let my guard down and got back to all the things I hadn’t dealt with, it was almost like going insane – like I always do. Took a long, long time, working in an artificial environment on a personal level. So many things not worked through for a long, long time.”

5: Countdown (from ‘Out Of The Cradle’, 1992)

Out Of The Cradle, Lindsey Buckingham’s third solo album, was his first release after leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1987. It was a departure from his previous two solo albums, with electronic and synthesised sounds minimised in favour of a renewed focus on guitar. On this track in particular, he wanted his instrument to “sting like a bee”.

Buckingham has said that he dislikes a showy style of guitar playing, favouring something that “serves the song”, as he explained in 2021. “You do hear some players who just tend to play on top of a song and not inside it,” he said. “Then there are people like Chet Atkins, people who play parts that make the records what they are, but sometimes you don’t even notice the parts. That’s what I would gravitate to, you know, over just ‘Listen to me play…’”

4: Slow Dancing (Extended Version) (from ‘Go Insane’, 1984)

The original Slow Dancing – on Go Insane – was great enough to sit among the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs, but this extended version, previously only available on a European 12” single, but now issued as part of the 20th Century Lindsey box set, is even better. Remixed by John “Jellybean” Benitez, who produced Holiday by Madonna, this version really pops out into the 80s, proving Buckingham as a contemporary force who was all over new musical technology.

“Slow Dancing was kind of a contemplation on the romantic notion that often happens when you’re young and you’re in a situation where there’s seemingly a range of possibilities at any given time,” Buckingham said in 2018. “And if you’re out of a relationship… It’s funny how whenever I would connect with someone, you always try to give it a level of at least romantic aspiration, if nothing else, because you want to make a human connection.”

3: D.W. Suite (from ‘Go Insane’, 1984)

Lindsey Buckingham very much admired The Beach Boys, and – along with post-punk – they were said to be one of the major influences for Buckingham on Tusk. He grew to know Dennis Wilson personally as, between 1979 and 1982, Dennis was in a relationship with Christine McVie, Buckingham’s bandmate in Fleetwood Mac. Dennis Wilson passed away at the end of 1983, and D.W. Suite is Buckingham’s tribute to him.

“When Dennis died, it got me thinking,” said Buckingham in 1984, “about The Beach Boys and the rough time they’ve had all around, really, and the fact that Brian went from a very commercial format into a far more experimental vein.” D.W. Suite, a three-movement piece that incorporates traditional song and the sound of Beach Boys’ fans, is one of the most ambitious tracks among the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs.

2: Holiday Road (from ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ soundtrack, 1983)

When Lindsey Buckingham was asked to write a couple of songs for the comedy film National Lampoon’s Vacation, he was given a vague brief about the movie and felt that “the stakes [were] quite low”. He ended up writing Holiday Road, creating one of his best-known songs in the process, and found it used over and over again in the National Lampoon sequels. “Obviously, I knew it had to be somewhat uplifting and a little bit funny, which it is, but somehow we nailed it,” Buckingham has said.

Holiday Road is one of Buckingham’s most covered songs, with versions being recorded by punk, pop and country artists. It’s also been used on several other movie and TV soundtracks right up to the present day, including during the second season of The Bear.

1: Trouble (from ‘Law And Order’, 1981)

Lindsey Buckingham’s first solo hit became a hallmark of his versatility. After Tusk, whose experimental urges had been fuelled by Buckingham’s interest in post-punk, came 1981’s Law And Order. “The only way I was going to explore the left side of my palate,” Buckingham has said, “was to do solo work.” Law And Order snugly sat alongside the new-wave sound dominant at the time – Trouble, in particular, spiked enough to sound contemporary, yet was also so accomplished that it easily won over Fleetwood Mac fans, too. The accompanying music video was incredibly distinctive, helping the song smash into the charts.

While Buckingham’s vision and playing dominated most of Law And Order, Trouble was a (slight) exception. Bass guitar was performed by George Hawkins, and the drums were originally played by Mick Fleetwood (although the eventual drums heard on the record were fused together from a tape loop of Fleetwood’s drumming and some Buckingham overdubs). This created a more live feel on Trouble, and brought dazzling energy to the track that tops this list of the best Lindsey Buckingham solo songs.

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