Pret­ty much every­one with a pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with Fleet­wood Mac knows at least a lit­tle some­thing about the per­son­al tumult behind their land­mark 1977 album Rumours: it’s one of rock’s most famous soap operas,” writes Jor­dan Run­tagh at Rolling Stone. Chris­tine McVie put it even more suc­cinct­ly— “Dra­ma. Dra-ma.”

But isn’t this how great songs get writ­ten, as we find out when we read the auto­bi­ogra­phies and inter­views of great song­writ­ers, who sub­li­mate their per­son­al ups and downs in lyrics that touch the emo­tion­al lives of mil­lions? The saga of Fleet­wood Mac just hap­pens to be a par­tic­u­lar­ly juicy exam­ple, giv­en that the band mem­bers’ roman­tic anguish most­ly came from failed rela­tion­ships with each oth­er.

The tale will for­ev­er be a cau­tion­ary one for musi­cians, though it’s hard­ly much of a deter­rent. Just lis­ten to those songs! But as Evan Puschak—otherwise known as video essay­ist the Nerdwriter—shows above, it takes a lot more than a bad breakup with the gui­tar play­er to make time­less pop art. Rumours “feels alive, months and years and decades after its cre­ation.” It’s so much more than the sum of its parts, even if those parts are rare and indis­pens­able: the con­sid­er­able musi­cian­ship on dis­play, the song­writ­ing expe­ri­ence, and espe­cial­ly the “vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed bud­get and time” Warn­er Broth­ers allot­ted the band.

Such extrav­a­gance is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for any­one else to come by. Still, noodling indef­i­nite­ly with fan­cy instru­ments and equip­ment does not a great album make. Puschak takes Ste­vie Nicks’ “Dreams” as an exam­ple of how the band excelled in the stu­dio. Writ­ten “in about 10 min­utes,” as Nicks tells it, while she sat in a “big black-vel­vet bed with Vic­to­ri­an drapes” in a stu­dio belong­ing to Sly Stone, the song’s stu­dio ver­sion shows off the lush, lay­ered pro­duc­tion the band spent the bet­ter part of a year bring­ing to her two-chord demo.

“Dreams”—one of the most mes­mer­iz­ing songs in the band’s canon—acquired its hyp­not­ic qual­i­ties through the use of a looped drum pat­tern, puls­ing, repet­i­tive bassline, and the sub­tle col­oration of gui­tar tex­tures that give the decep­tive­ly sim­ple song its ebb and flow.

The sto­ry of Rumours is as much about fan­tas­tic songcraft, musi­cian­ship, arrang­ing, and pro­duc­tion as it is about tri­umph over the human resources night­mare behind the scenes. The per­son­al inspi­ra­tion for these songs makes for good gos­sip, but these are not life events any­one needs to emu­late to make art. Fleet­wood Mac’s col­lec­tive inven­tive­ness, emo­tion­al hon­esty, and skill are what ulti­mate­ly make them such an inspi­ra­tion to musi­cians, and cre­ative types in gen­er­al. For anoth­er exam­ple of how they built the archi­tec­tur­al mar­vels on Rumours, see the short take above from Poly­phon­ic about the album’s mood­i­est song, “The Chain.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Inside the Mak­ing of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band, Rock’s Great Con­cept Album

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

There’s a war on Christ­mas, don’t you know. The attacks are relentless—at every shop­ping mall, drug­store, gro­cery, fam­i­ly din­ner, bad­ly-lit office par­ty. It is the scourge of bland Christ­mas music, and it can absolute­ly ruin your hol­i­day. There you are, mer­ri­ly shop­ping for the per­fect gift or the per­fect ham, and, wham! The most dispir­it­ing ver­sion of “Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy” you’ve ever heard in your life. You feel sick, depressed, deranged. Is this some kind of son­ic weapon? Or do you respect the sea­son too much to let it be demeaned by medi­oc­rity?

Fight back, my friend, with the playlist below. Keep your Christ­mas cheer—if that’s your bag. The dis­crim­i­nat­ing Yule­tide cel­e­brant must guard their ears zeal­ous­ly, lest some undead zom­bie trav­es­ty of a “White Christ­mas” (or worse yet, “Blue Christ­mas”) does them in. Opt instead for the sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion of the Ramones’ “Mer­ry Christ­mas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight).” Lis­ten to the Damned. You don’t have to believe in San­ta Claus, but you know “There Ain’t No San­i­ty Clause.”

The Van­dals keep it mov­ing with “My First X‑Mas (As A Woman),” a straight-ahead burst of pos­i­tiv­i­ty, empow­er­ment, and com­ing out as trans to the fam­i­ly. They return lat­er with “Grandpa’s Last X‑Mas,” an hon­est reck­on­ing with mor­tal­i­ty dur­ing the sea­son. Check out the earnest ren­di­tion of “O Come All Ye Faith­ful” from Bad Reli­gion, who clear­ly adore the song enough to real­ly do it jus­tice, even if many of their usu­al lyrics can be summed up by swap­ping the words in their name. (They put out a whole album of respect­ful Christ­mas tunes. “Any­one expect­ing some sort of sub­ver­sion of the hol­i­day clas­sics,” notes Apple Music, “will be dis­ap­point­ed.”)

As this playlist shows, punk rock has always had a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Christ­mas. But if you think about it, so have many indie, fringe, and avant-garde move­ments. John Waters believes the “whole pur­pose of life is Christ­mas.” Andy Warhol “real­ly, real­ly loved Christ­mas,” and made sev­er­al Christ­mas-themed art­works. And in 1977, the Sex Pis­tols played their last UK gig, a Christ­mas ben­e­fit for an audi­ence of sev­en and eight year olds. John­ny Rot­ten remem­bered it lat­er as “one of the high­lights of mine and Sid’s career.”

Fan­tas­tic. The ulti­mate reward. One of my all-time favourite gigs. Young kids, and we’re doing Bod­ies and they’re burst­ing out with laugh­ter on the ‘f*ck this f*ck that’ verse. The cor­rect response: not the shock hor­ror ‘How dare you?’

The kids get it, why can’t we? Christ­mas is a fine time for irrev­er­ence, camp, crude humor, booze, and can­dor. It is also a time for the heart­felt appre­ci­a­tion most punks seem to feel for the hol­i­day of light shows and inflat­able rein­deer, of a crack­ling fire on TV and a place that does deliv­ery. San­ta Claus, the Holy Baby, and Grem­lins. Stuck with rel­a­tives who can’t get the spir­it of giv­ing? Put on “Bloody Unholy Christ­mas,” “I’ve Got a Bon­er for Christ­mas,” and “Cred­it Crunch Christ­mas,” and turn them all the way up. And have a very Mer­ry Christ­mas and Hap­py Hol­i­days.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy”: A Won­der­ful Christ­mas Chest­nut from 1977

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We like to bring this chest­nut back from time to time. Watch it, and you’ll know why.

In 1977, just a short month before Bing Cros­by died of a heart attack, the 40s croon­er host­ed David Bowie, the glam rock­er, on his Christ­mas show. The awk­ward­ness of the meet­ing is pal­pa­ble. An old­er, crusty Cros­by had no real famil­iar­i­ty with the younger, androg­y­nous Bowie, and Bowie was­n’t crazy about singing The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. So, short­ly before the show’s tap­ing, a team of writ­ers had to fran­ti­cal­ly retool the song, blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas song with a new­ly-writ­ten tune called Peace on Earth. (You can watch the writ­ers tell the sto­ry, years lat­er, below.)

After one hour of rehearsal, the two singers record­ed The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth and made a lit­tle clas­sic. The Wash­ing­ton Post has the back­sto­ry on the strange Bing-Bowie meet­ing. Also find a Will Fer­rell par­o­dy of the meet­ing here. We hope you enjoy revis­it­ing this clip with us. Hap­py hol­i­days to you all.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie’s Fash­ion­able Mug Shot From His 1976 Mar­i­jua­na Bust

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

Sev­er­al years ago, we fea­tured a list Kurt Cobain made of his top 50 albums, which appeared in his jour­nals, pub­lished in 2002. It’s most­ly a typ­i­cal list of stan­dards one would find in any young punk’s record col­lec­tion in the late 80s/90s. As we wrote then, his “‘Top 50 by Nir­vana’… seems like the ide­al code for pro­duc­ing a 90s alter­na­tive star.” But these sources were not wide­ly acces­si­ble at the time. Cobain’s influ­ence was such that he turned mil­lions of peo­ple on to music they’d nev­er heard before. That influ­ence con­tin­ues, of course, and you can par­take of it your­self in the playlist below.

Amid the clas­sic rock and clas­sic punk—the Bea­t­les, the Clash, the Sex Pistols—are a few slabs of clas­sic DC hard­core, then and now pret­ty obscure. Dave Grohl—stalwart of the DC scene before Cobain recruit­ed him to move across the coun­try and join Nirvana—may have added these albums to the list, or Cobain might have done so him­self. In any case, his men­tions of them, and their posthu­mous appear­ance in his let­ters and notes, brought bands like long-defunct Faith and Void new recog­ni­tion, as well as post-hard­core pio­neers Rites of Spring, who helped inspire the emo and screamo to come, for bet­ter or worse.

Along­side Iggy Pop, Black Flag, and Bad Brains are less­er-known punk bands like the Rain­coats, the Vase­lines, and the Saints, play­ful lo-fi weirdos like Daniel John­son, the Shag­gs, and Half Japan­ese; the coun­try blues of Lead Bel­ly, caus­tic noise of But­t­hole Surfers, thun­der­ous, pun­ish­ing nihilism of Swans…. Cobain may have helped them all sell a few records, and he def­i­nite­ly inspired new bands that sound like them by turn­ing peo­ple on to their music for the first time. (When Cobain cov­ered David Bowie, how­ev­er, fans start­ed to mis­take “The Man Who Sold the World” for a Nir­vana song, to Bowie’s under­stand­able con­ster­na­tion.)

Cobain’s list is lim­it­ed to a fair­ly nar­row range of styles, with some rare excep­tions: Lead Bel­ly, Pub­lic Ene­my, Aero­smith (!)—it’s an almost purist punk and punk-derived palate, the DNA of Nir­vana. In the age of the inter­net, one can cob­ble togeth­er a list like this—with no real pri­or knowledge—in an hour or so, sim­ply by googling around and doing a bit of research. Dur­ing Cobain’s for­ma­tive years on the out­skirts of Seat­tle, when a lot of this music cir­cu­lat­ed only on lim­it­ed cas­sette runs and poor­ly record­ed mix­tapes and copies, on record labels financed by veg­an bake sales and loans from the ‘rents—it could be very hard to come by.

While Cobain’s list may look, in hind­sight, like stan­dard fare to many long­time fans, what it rep­re­sents for those who came of age musi­cal­ly in the years just before the Web is a phys­i­cal jour­ney through all of the rela­tion­ships, con­certs, and record shops one had to move through to dis­cov­er the bands that spoke direct­ly to you and your friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Cobain’s Home Demos: Ear­ly Ver­sions of Nir­vana Hits, and Nev­er-Released Songs

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Watch The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain on the 20th Anniver­sary of the Musician’s Sui­cide

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness