Tusk

Released on October 12, 1979, Tusk was Fleetwood Mac's audacious follow-up to the mega-selling Rumours. Rather than repeat that album's polished formula, Lindsey Buckingham pushed the band toward a sparser, punk- and new-wave-inflected sound, recording several tracks alone at home on a four-track machine.^[1]

The sessions, held over roughly ten months at a custom-built room (Studio D) inside The Village Recorder in Los Angeles, reportedly cost over a million dollars, making Tusk one of the most expensive rock albums ever made at the time.^[1] Producer Ken Caillat described Buckingham's studio experiments as those of a man determined to avoid repeating himself, even reversing settings and recording household objects for percussion.^[1]

As a double album, Tusk let each of the band's three songwriters, Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie, pursue distinct directions, giving the record a fragmented, almost solo-artist-by-committee feel that John McVie himself noted at the time.^[1] Commercially it sold about four million copies, a steep drop from Rumours' ten million, and was viewed by the label as a disappointment. Critical opinion has warmed considerably since, with retrospective reviews praising its restless ambition.^[1]