Into The Music
Lindsey Buckingham is done being coy. In a video posted to his Instagram this week, the guitarist who built Fleetwood Mac into a stadium act detailed his 2026 plans in a way that stopped just short of an announcement. A new solo album, one song away from completion. The long-awaited Fleetwood Mac documentary, helmed by Frank Marshall for Apple. And then this, the line everyone zeroed in on: a reunion with Stevie Nicks is, in his words, “in the air.”
That is not nothing. For years, the relationship between Buckingham and Nicks was one of the ugliest chapters in rock mythology, a creative partnership curdled by a romantic breakup that never fully healed. When the remaining members of Fleetwood Mac fired Buckingham in 2018 during the Mac\x27s final touring run, Nicks was widely reported to have pushed for it. The band insisted it was a collective decision. Buckingham sued, settled, and spent the years since putting a careful distance between himself and the Mac\x27s legacy.
Then something shifted. Last fall, the two appeared together on Song Exploder to dissect “Frozen Love,” the closing track from the 1973 Buckingham Nicks album, a record that predates their Mac tenure and carries its own mythology. The conversation was warm, specific, and unguarded in a way that neither of them does in public anymore. It felt like a test, and apparently they both passed.
The Buckingham Nicks reissue followed, the first time that album had been available in any official capacity in decades. Fans bought it immediately and without hesitation, which is its own kind of signal. Nostalgia for what that duo was before Fleetwood Mac absorbed them is different from nostalgia for the Mac itself. It is more personal, more fragile, and arguably more interesting.
Buckingham was careful not to define what “something good, something wonderful” actually looks like. It could mean a Buckingham Nicks tour. It could mean a handful of shows. It could mean a new recording. It could also mean the Apple documentary premiering to nice reviews while both artists wave politely from separate coasts. He was not ruling anything out, and he was not promising anything.
What he did make clear is that the door is open, and that he believes it will lead somewhere. Given where they were five years ago, that alone is worth paying attention to. The Fleetwood Mac Rumours 50th anniversary falls in 2027. The timing is not subtle.
The documentary, when it arrives, will feature interviews with all four surviving core members: Buckingham, Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie. It is the first time they have collectively participated in anything like this since Christine McVie\x27s death in 2022. What that conversation looks like on screen, and whether it leads to anything beyond the screen, remains the actual story here.
Look, I’ve heard enough ‘reunion in the air’ stories to know the air is usually full of hot air. Miles Davis never went back to the Kind of Blue lineup even when people begged him , because the music had moved on. If Buckingham and Nicks actually get back in a room together, great. But these guitar-pop reconciliations rarely produce anything worth the tabloid coverage. I’ll believe it when there’s a record on the table, not an Instagram video.
Terrence, the Miles comparison is sharp but I’d push it in a slightly different direction , Davis didn’t go back because going back would have been a creative regression for him specifically. The Buckingham-Nicks situation is different: the unfinished business is emotional rather than artistic, and sometimes that kind of resolution actually unlocks new creative territory rather than blocking it. I’ve seen enough reunion tours where the live version exceeded the original that I’m reluctant to assume the worst. Though I’ll admit “in the air” is doing a lot of work in that headline.
In my experience of classical music world, the reunion of great collaborators is always more complicated than it appears from outside. Two musicians who have played together very long time , they know each other’s silences as well as their notes, which can be beautiful or can be the reason they cannot be in same room. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks made music that sounded like a conversation that was never quite finished. Perhaps that is why the possibility of reunion feels so significant to so many people.
As someone who writes songs with another person, I know how hard it is to come back to something after a real falling out. You can reconcile as people and still find that the musical chemistry is different , or sometimes you come back and it’s somehow better because you’ve both been somewhere else and returned. I don’t know their story well enough to guess which it’ll be, but I hope it’s the second one.
A Buckingham and Nicks reunion would be EVERYTHING. Those two together have this energy that’s impossible to manufacture , you can hear it in every Fleetwood Mac song where they’re both in the room. Honestly if this happens I’m buying whatever ticket they sell, I don’t care where in the world it is. Some musical chemistry you just don’t walk away from 🎉