When the news of Christine McVie’s death broke yesterday, radio stations around the world queued up her 1987 hit, “Everywhere”. The song’s sparkling synths will have shimmered from a thousand car radios and supermarket speakers, sending tiny, shiny bubbles of love and anticipation fizzing into the midweek mood. Paces will have picked up to the bouncing trot of the melody and fingers will have begun tapping on steering wheels. Multipacks of loo roll will have been tossed into trolleys with a little more flourish. Then McVie’s clear, questing voice will have cut straight through the mix.
“Can you hear me calling/ Out your name?/ You know that I’ve fallen/ And I don’t know what to say…” It’s a sound that will have transported many older fans back to its release, over a quarter of a century ago, a month after the “Great Storm” had swept through the south of England and northern France, killing 22 people. I was 12 years old and overwhelmed by the giant trees so savagely felled, their helplessly exposed roots flailing into the open. We drove past them in my dad’s BMW (this was the Eighties, the boomers were making money), with the bass lines of Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night thrilling from his state-of-the-art speakers. And when we got to the part where McVie sang “Everywhere”, I would imagine her voice was coming from one of those fallen oaks. Strong, brave, tumbled into the revelation of hidden parts: “I’ll speak a little louder/ I’ll even shout/ You know that I’m proud/ And I can’t get the words out.”
