Warner Bros. Records releases the 13th Fleetwood Mac album, Mirage, the band’s first studio recording since 1979. With the hits “Hold Me”, “Gypsy”, “Can’t Go Back” and “Love In Store”, the album climbs the charts quickly, but the band quickly disperses to solo careers again, not recording any further new material until 1987’s Tango In The Night. 
For some odd reason, this is truly my all-time favorite Fleetwood Mac album. I think it was here that the band managed to create the perfect synthesis of Linsdey Buckingham’s far-afield experimentation on Tusk and the more mainstream sound that endears most people to the Mac. My favorite Mac single, “Hold Me”, hails from this album, as does my favorite non-single album track, the very strange “Empire State”, which sounds like it was sung by Buckingham under the influence of (A) helium, (B) laryngitis, or (C) both of the above. For all the nice weird bits of this album that I loved both then and now, I also have to state that I have never really liked most of the Stevie-Nicks-centric songs; “Gypsy”, while nice in its own way, really set in concrete the sonic pattern for Stevie’s future contributions to the group for the rest of its existence.
- Love In Store (3:14)
- Can’t Go Back (2:42)
- That’s Alright (3:09)
- Book of Love (3:21)
- Gypsy (4:24)
- Only Over You (4:08)
- Empire State (2:51)
- Straight Back (4:17)
- Hold Me (3:44)
- Oh Diane (2:33)
- Eyes of the World (3:44)
- Wish You Were Here (4:43)
Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1981
Total running time: 42:50
1993 music review by Earl Green