Fleetwood Mac are a great band who have never had a great compilation. The pinnacle of their achievements is the three albums they released between 1975 and 1979: Fleetwood Mac and Rumours, two immaculate pop records about sexual infidelity and cocaine, and Tusk, a weird, sprawling masterpiece. Those albums are well-served here; The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac showcases the results of having three strong songwriters and a willingness to spend months in the studio sweating the smallest details — but including nine of Rumours' eleven tracks was probably overkill. Their music after that became more syrupy, although the sugar sometimes coated a wonderfully poisonous pill such as Christine McVie's "Little Lies." Unfortunately, this two-disc collection completely discards the first eight years of Fleetwood Mac's career, when they were an excellent British blues band, in favor of superfluous oddities such as an acoustic version of Lindsay Buckingham's 1984 solo single "Go Insane."

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.