9 & 10. Fleetwood Mac, "Second Hand News"; "Go Your Own Way": When Fleetwood Mac was recording their 1977 multiplatinum album, Rumours, the band was plagued with the breakups of their personal relationships: Keyboard player Christine and bassist John McVie's marriage was ending, as was drummer Mick Fleetwood's marriage to Jenny Boyd. Also, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks's relationship was in shambles.
On "Go Your Own Way," Buckingham includes a rather nasty lyric attacking Nicks that says, "Packing up/ shacking up is all you wanna do." This infuriated Nicks, and she asked him to take that particular line out. Buckingham refused to do so.
"Second Hand News" was another attack on Nicks. According to Making Rumours, co-producer and sound engineer Ken Calliat's new book, during the recording of the album Buckingham kept the lyrics a secret from everyone else because he knew that those lyrics would be like a lightning rod and would spark yet another argument with Nicks.
As on "Go Your Own Way," the lyrics are pretty biting, when Buckingham croons, "One thing I think you should know/ I ain't gonna miss you when you go/ Been down so long/ I've been tossed around enough/ Couldn't you just let me go down and do my stuff." Even more ironic is that Nicks actually sings backup on key parts of the verses and the chorus.
8. John Lennon, "How Do You Sleep": There were many contributing factors that led to the Beatles' 1970 breakup. Among them were the fact that George Harrison's songs were frequently getting snubbed for albums in favor of songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. There was also John's wife, Yoko Ono, who is still a very divisive person in Beatles history.
Needless to say, all of the Beatles went on to their own solo careers: John and Yoko with the Plastic Ono Band and his own solo career, Paul and his wife Linda with Wings and later his solo career, as well as George and Ringo with their solo careers.
Lennon, feeling attacked by Paul's release of Ram (newly reissued), released "How Do You Sleep," a rather naked attack on Paul McCartney. The song itself references the "Paul is dead" hoax ("Those freaks was right when they said you was dead") and even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
However, the song takes a personal approach when Lennon sings "A pretty face may last a year or two/ But pretty soon they'll see what you can do/ The sound you make is Muzak to my ears/ you must have learned something in all those years/ Ah, how do you sleep? Ah, how do you sleep at night?"