About The Song
“Go Your Own Way” is a song by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released as the first single from their eleventh studio album, Rumours, on December 20, 1976, in the United States by Warner Bros. Records. Written and sung by guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, the track was produced by Fleetwood Mac along with Richard Dashut and Ken Caillat. Recording took place in 1976 across three studios: Record Plant in Sausalito, Wally Heider’s Studio 3 in Hollywood, and Criteria Studios in Miami. The song was mastered just in time for a pre-Christmas release to boost anticipation for the Rumours album, set for February 1977.
The single marked Fleetwood Mac’s first top-ten hit in the United States, peaking at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks on March 12 and March 19, 1977, and staying on the chart for 15 weeks. In the UK, it reached No. 38 on the Official Singles Chart, charting for four weeks starting February 19, 1977. Over the years, reissues and streaming have seen it re-enter charts, including No. 61 on the UK Singles Sales Chart in 2015, No. 76 on the UK Streaming Chart in 2025, and No. 91 on the UK End of Year Singles Chart in 2023. The track has been certified Platinum in the UK (600,000 units) and Gold in the US (500,000 digital units). The Rumours album itself was a massive success, with pre-orders reaching 800,000 copies, the largest advance sale in Warner Bros.’ history at the time.
The song’s creation stemmed from Buckingham’s breakup with bandmate Stevie Nicks, whom he had known since age 16. Written in a rented house in Florida during a break from the Fleetwood Mac Tour, Buckingham composed it in a “stream of consciousness,” using musical notes as placeholders for unfinished lyrics. Producer Ken Caillat initially doubted its potential, noting Buckingham’s intense demo performance as “non-musical.” The track was the second song worked on for Rumours, with early sessions featuring Mick Fleetwood on an eight-inch Ludwig snare, John McVie on Fender bass, Christine McVie on Hammond organ, and Buckingham on a 1959 Fender Stratocaster. Nicks’ tambourine parts were excluded from the final mix.
Inspired by the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” Buckingham guided Fleetwood to create a unique drum groove, using tom-toms and a bass drum hit on the middle beat. The drum setup was miked with AKG 451s, an M-88 Beyerdynamic, and a Neumann U 87, positioned near plywood for an open sound. Buckingham layered a distorted and clean electric guitar to create a thicker rhythm sound and struggled with the guitar solo, which Caillat pieced together from six takes in Criteria Studios. A Shure SM57 microphone captured the solo and vocals, and a “lucky mistake” in the final mix created a pumping effect with the kick drum and rhythm guitar via dynamic range compression.
Behind-the-scenes tensions arose when Nicks objected to the lyric “Packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do,” which Buckingham kept despite her protests, as she denied the accusation. Los Angeles DJ B. Mitchel Reed criticized the song’s beat clarity on air, prompting Buckingham to explain that a late-added acoustic guitar part caused confusion over the beat’s starting point. Drummer Jeff Porcaro of Toto praised Fleetwood’s live performance of the track, intrigued by his dyslexic approach to drumming, which Fleetwood humorously described as “capitalizing on [his] own ineptness.”
Video
Lyric
Loving you
Isn’t the right thing to do
How can I ever change things
That I feelIf I could
Baby, I’d give you my world
How can I
When you won’t take it from meYou can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own wayTell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up
Shacking up is all you want to doIf I could
Baby, I’d give you my world
Open up
Everything’s waiting for youYou can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way