Released 1978 Recorded 1976 Length 3:56 | Format 7" Genre Rock | |
B-side "I Don't Want to Know" (Japan only) | ||
"Oh Daddy" is a song written by Christine McVie that was first performed by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac as the tenth song off their 1977 album Rumours. It was also released as a single in Japan.
Contents
Background
According to McVie, "Oh Daddy" was written for the band's drummer, Mick Fleetwood. At the time, Fleetwood was the only father of the band, with two daughters. Fleetwood has listed the song as one of his favorite Fleetwood Mac songs of all time. However, both Lindsey Buckingham's former girlfriend Carol Ann Harris and Stevie Nicks' biographer Zoe Howe have written that the song was originally written for the band's lighting director, who McVie had been dating at the time. Both Harris and Howe say McVie only later claimed that the song was written for Fleetwood.
For a while, the song was known as 'Addy' due to a technical mishap. Ken Caillat, the band's producer, had made the mistake while playing back a take. "We were going to do some overdubs, and while rewinding the tape, a portable tape oscillator fell on the machine, sending it into free-wheel – the reels were spinning out of control. I jumped on the machine to stop it - and snapped the tape! Oh, man... [laughs] We listened back and there it was: ‘Oh ‘addy.’ The ‘D’ part of Christine’s vocal was cut off. My heart sunk."
Near the end of the song, McVie plays some random notes on the keyboard. These were not originally intended to be part of the song, and McVie only played them to get the attention of the control room. But the band liked them so they did not remove them from the finished song.
Producer Ken Caillat described "Oh Daddy" as "a beautiful, airy song." He noted that getting the proper tempo was particularly tricky, since it tended to sound rushed at a quicker tempo but lethargic at a slower pace. Fleetwood Mac biographer Cath Carroll praises McVie's vocal and describes the song as "a sexy, old English version of The Rolling Stones' 'Fool to Cry'."