save me a place

with all due respect to the Lindsey Buckingham-led interesting and kind of good forays into post-punk on this album, it's not really what we're here for - skipping ahead to -

SAVE ME A PLACE

fleetwood mac - save me a place

"save me a place," the fourth, also Buckingham-led song on the album, starts with a lyric I can really fucking relate to right now

don't know why I have to work
don't know why I can't play

oh man don't even get me started on that shit right now. anyway, the kind of folksy strumminess of this one was a turnoff at first, I admit, but by 0:30 suddenly you're enveloped in this beautifully lush, 3 (4?) part FM choir, irresistibly calling on you to

saaaaave me a place
I'll come running if you loooooove me today

and how could you not? these choruses are some of the most beautiful, warmly tender moments on this album which, I promise you, is about to get increasingly chilly and conflicted and bitter and really fucking Stevie Nicksish in a minute. like the chorus of "over & over," this gives us one more chance to really connect with the intimacy and love that's still part of these difficult relationships even as it reminds us how flawed they are. where has Lindsey gone, so that you have to save him a place? where is he running from? as the next verse makes clear, he is filled with (typical male etc whatever) ambivalence towards commitment, staying in place -

don't know why I have to go
don't know why I can't stay
guess I want to be alone
and guess I need to be amazed

despite the fact that this is an acoustic strummy folk song, the arrangement and performance, in their subtle way, convey the same determination as more muscular FM songs - because despite the quiet, europhic sweetness of that chorus, Lindsey is definitely leaving, his mysterious internal dude-compass propelling him away in search of vague amazements as relentlessly as Mick Fleetwood's typically sensitive-yet-hard-hitting percussion. he'll come running back, he promises. we'll see