“Songbird” by Fleetwood Mac

“Songbird” appears on Fleetwood Mac’s seminal record, Rumours
Credit: American Songwriter, Fleetwood Mac

Highlighting an eternal, selfless love, Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac member and composer of “Songbird,” asserts that the song is about no one specific and nothing in particular. This makes it a bit of a blank canvas when it comes to reminiscing and celebrating love or mourning a loss, whether romantic, familial, spiritual or platonic. In an interview, McVie cheekily said of the song, “A lot of people play it at their weddings or at bar mitzvahs or at their dog’s funeral. It’s universal. It’s about you and nobody else. It’s about you and everybody else.”

Simple yet profound, the lyrics are from the perspective of an “everyman” sharing unconditional love for an unnamed recipient:

To you, I will give the world
To you, I’ll never be cold
‘Cause I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right

And the songbirds are singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before

The titular “songbirds” (which are often connected to spiritual visitation) impart an eternal context to the sentiment shared — that they “know the score” reads as if they’re aware of love’s place within the fleeting nature of life. McVie follows this lyric with repeated strains of “I love you” that signify the enduring nature of love.

Christine McVie sings into a microphone at the piano
Credit: Mojo Magazine

“Songbird” and Divine Inspiration

Adding to the song’s ethereal nature is the fact that McVie composed it in a burst of middle-of-the-night “spiritual” inspiration, fully formed in under 30 minutes. In an interview with The Guardian about it, she said it was “as if [she’d] been visited.” As it happens, spiritual visitations weren’t too foreign in the McVie household, as her mother Beatrice was a psychic medium and healer, who foretold Fleetwood Mac’s at times rocky, overall miraculous trajectory.

The band’s namesake, Mick Fleetwood, lends further credence to the spiritual significance of “Songbird.” In an interview about the songs that musicians would choose for their own funerals, he said this, according to NME: “The song at my funeral, which will be in five minutes! Wow, that is maudlin. I’d probably pick ‘Songbird’ by Christine McVie, to send me off fluttering.”

You can listen to Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird” in the video below.