Christine McVie wrote the hit Fleetwood Mac song ‘Over My Head’ (Cheat Seet)
Keyboardist Christine McVie wrote the Fleetwood Mac song “Over My Head,” which Reprise Records selected as the lead single from the band’s 1975 self-titled album. The song reached No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976, and it helped the Fleetwood Mac record sell 8 million copies.
The track tells the story of a mercurial man whose moods change like the weather. Although McVie was married to her Fleetwood Mac bandmate, John McVie, she gave no indication that “Over My Head” was about the bassist.
The lyrics include, “You can take me to paradise/ And then again you can be cold as ice/ I’m over my head/ But it sure feels nice.”
Christine McVie once revealed she wrote ‘Over My Head’ about Lindsey Buckingham
Although the song has romantic undertones, Christine McVie revealed that she didn’t write “Over My Head” about a lover. She was inspired by her Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Lindsey Buckingham. Although the band members had various relationships and affairs with one another, Buckingham and McVie never connected romantically.
McVie described to the BBC why she wrote the song about the guitarist, and her words matched the lyrics. “He was that kind of guy, he could be cold as ice, and then he could be great,” she said (per Louder Sound). “So I took that feeling I was feeling, and I turned it into a song.”
Lindsey Buckingham and the Fleetwood Mac keyboardist were exceptionally close
Although Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham never dated, the Fleetwood Mac bandmates had a very close friendship and musical partnership. In 2017, they released an album as a duo titled Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie, and they toured together that same year.
“We’ve always written well together, Lindsey and I, and this has just spiraled into something really amazing that we’ve done between us,” McVie said of the album (via the Los Angeles Times).
After McVie died in November 2022, Buckingham shared an emotional tribute to the “Songbird” singer.
“Christine McVie’s sudden passing is profoundly heartbreaking,” he tweeted in a handwritten note. “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, and 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.”
He continued, “I feel very lucky to have known her. Though she will be deeply missed, her spirit will live on through that body of work and that legacy.”
