Don't Stop

Christine McVie wrote "Don't Stop" about her separation from John McVie, Fleetwood Mac's bassist, after eight years of marriage. He did not know it was about him until it came out.

The band tracked it with drums, bass, electric guitar and electric piano on March 16, 1976, under the working title "Yesterday's Gone." A few weeks later McVie changed the title and asked Lindsey Buckingham to sing it as a duet. Producer Ken Caillat said that improved things dramatically. Take 25 became the master. After the basic tracks at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, the band moved to Los Angeles, where McVie and Buckingham decided the song was pitched wrong and scrapped everything except the drums. On August 9, McVie replaced the electric piano with a tack piano, an instrument with metal thumb tacks on the hammers. Caillat called it a breakthrough that made the song bounce along.

In the US it was the third single from Rumours, released in June 1977, and it peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 that September. Bill Clinton used it as the theme of his 1992 presidential campaign and had the band play it at his 1993 inaugural ball. Afterward Greatest Hits jumped from number 30 to number 11 on the Catalog Albums Chart.