Not That Funny

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"Not That Funny"
Single by Fleetwood Mac
from the album Tusk
B-side"Save Me a Place"
ReleasedFebruary 1980 (UK)[1]
Recorded1979
Genre
Length3:11
LabelWarner Bros.
Songwriter(s)Lindsey Buckingham
Producer(s)Fleetwood Mac, Richard Dashut, Ken Caillat
Fleetwood Mac singles chronology
"Sara"
(1980) 		"Not That Funny"
(1980) 		"Think About Me"
(1980)

"Not That Funny" is a song by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released in 1980. Composed and sung by guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, it was written as a response to the punk movement in the late 1970s.[3] The song share some lyrics with "I Know I'm Not Wrong", another Buckingham penned song that appeared on the Tusk album.[4]

Background[edit]

"Not That Funny" was derived from an unused Buckingham song titled "Needles and Pins", originally recorded in June 1978. "Needles and Pins" later split into two different songs, "Not That Funny" and "I Know I'm Not Wrong", both of which share the "don't blame me" lyrics found in the chorus and the "here comes the nighttime" lyrics found in the bridge.[5]

Buckingham performed his vocal part on the ground in a push-up position to achieve the desired vocal take. He also insisted on recording the vocals in a replica of his own personal bathroom, which was installed in Studio D of the LA Village Recorder. Engineer and co-producer Ken Caillat taped a microphone to the bathroom's tile floor to satisfy Buckingham's request.[6] Buckingham played the song on a Stratocaster guitar and treated the instrument with a variable speed oscillator (VSO). "I just slow the machine down, coming up with a picking part like that, double or triple it and tweak the VSO on either side so that it's slightly out of tune, and the whole thing comes out with all this phasing".[7]

Some of the electric guitars were detuned and recorded at high speed before being slowed down to 30 ips. The electric guitars were also sent through a tape recorder and mixing console to achieve a lower pitched, compressed, and thicker sound. The inverse occurred for the acoustic guitars, which were recorded at a slower speed but sped up with the VSO so that the instrument would resemble a harpsichord or a music box. The acoustic guitars were used sparingly on the verses but opened up during the bridge and chorus with an eighth and sixteenth note feel.[5]

For the drums, Buckingham layered several tracks of kick and snare drums and overdubbed tom drum fills leading to the vamp. The vocals were tripled, some of which were sung by Christine McVie. Fleetwood Mac engineer Hernán Rojas commented that Buckingham often asked McVie to help out with vocals on his songs due to their vocal blend. Buckingham also played the cello setting on a Chamberlin M1 keyboard to provide additional textures to the rhythm track.[5]

Release and live performances[edit]

While released as a single in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, "Not That Funny" was not released elsewhere. Instead, the track's B-Side, "Think About Me", was issued as the third single in North America. Like the singles from Fleetwood Mac's 1975 self-titled release, both singles were slightly remixed for radio. While "Think About Me" reached the top 30 in both the US and Canada, "Not That Funny" failed to chart at all. Despite the lack of initial success, the song became a live staple at Fleetwood Mac concerts. Played live, the song took on an entirely new arrangement – stretched out to almost nine minutes frequently, the song showcased Buckingham's guitar playing, John McVie's bass playing and featured a solo spot featuring Mick Fleetwood's drumming. "Not That Funny" has been performed on the Tusk Tour, Mirage tour, The Dance tour, and the Live 2013 tour.[8][9]

For the Tusk tour, the band wanted their keyboard tech, Jeff Sova, to play synthesizers on the song to recreate some of the additional sounds heard on the record. However, this idea was dropped as it was interfering with his stage work. Instead, the only keyboard used on the song was a Yamaha console piano, played by Christine McVie.[10]

Critical reception[edit]

"Not That Funny" has generally received positive reception. Stephen Holden, a reviewer for Rolling Stone, compared the production of the track to a beautifully recorded basement tape.[11] Another reviewer from Rolling Stone pointed similarities in the guitar work between "Not That Funny" and a Go Insane track, "Loving Cup".[12] Raoul Hernandez of The Austin Chronicle said that "Not That Funny" perfectly demonstrates Buckingham's ability to craft pop/rock songs, and that it reveals the "staleness" of Rumours.[13] In his review of Tusk for NME, Nick Kent described "Not That Funny" as "a Cajun-style bruising thump-up with a fade-out all too redolent of more White Album idiocies."[14] In Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll, the authors characterised "Not That Funny" as an "anti-pop song that is little more than Buckingham yelling 'Well, it's not that funny, is it?', over and over until his vocal cords fray and shred and finally give way.[15]

Retrospectively, Marcello Carlin of Uncut described it as a "disturbing" song "on which Buckingham’s near-psychotic guitar and vocal screams approach Pere Ubu territory."[16] In his piece for Melody Maker's Unknown Pleasures guide, Simon Reynolds drew comparison to Faust's "It's a Bit of Pain" (1973), and praised Buckingham's "hornet-in-your-earhole fuzz solo".[17] David Bennun of The Quietus wrote that "Not That Funny" resembles the music of Devo.[18] Annie Zaleski of The Guardian has commented that while some of Fleetwood Mac's songwriting peers of the 1960s and 1970s "incorporated dance influences and synthesisers" to varying levels of success, the group's "new wave nod", "Not That Funny", was a "transformative" example.[19]

Personnel[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Hung, Steffen. "Fleetwood Mac – Not That Funny". Hitparade.ch. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
  2. ^ Holtje, Steve (1998). "Fleetwood Mac". In Graff, Gary; Durchholz, Daniel (eds.). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. Detroit: Visible Ink Press. p. 434.
  3. ^ Harr, Douglous (13 January 2016). "Fleetwood Mac – 'Fleetwood Mac', 'Rumours' + 'Tusk' (1975 -1979): Reissues". Something Else!. Retrieved February 7, 2016.
  4. ^ Weingarten, Christopher; et al. (2 May 2022). "Fleetwood Mac's 50 Greatest Songs". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  5. ^ a b c Caillat, Ken; Rojas, Hernan (2019). Get Tusked: The Inside Story of Fleetwood Mac's Most Anticipated Album. Guilford, Connecticut: Backbeat Books. pp. 178–179, 183–184. ISBN 978-1-4930-5983-6.
  6. ^ Reed, Ryan (2019-10-11). "Fleetwood Mac's 'Tusk': 10 Things You Didn't Know". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2019-10-12.
  7. ^ Irvin, Jim (2016). Tusk (2015 Remastered Deluxe Edition) (Liner Notes). Fleetwood Mac. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Records Inc. p. 15. Publisher Warner Bros #2HS-3350.
  8. ^ Jonze, Tim (15 December 2016). "Fleetwood Mac: Mirage box set review – high-calibre songs that outshine the imitators". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  9. ^ Mountain, Lexie (10 April 2013). "Armed with hits, Fleetwood Mac plays with crowd's emotions at Verizon Center". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  10. ^ Doerschuk, Bob. "From the Archive: Christine McVie - KeyboardMag". www.keyboardmag.com. Archived from the original on 10 July 2015. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
  11. ^ Holden, Stephen (13 December 1979). "Fleetwood Mac Tusk Album Review". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 20, 2015.
  12. ^ Connelly, Christopher (August 30, 1984). "Lindsey Buckingham's Tuneful Triumph". The Blue Letter Archives. Archived from the original on December 30, 2015. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
  13. ^ Hernandez, Raoul. "Live Shots – Music – Fleetwood Mac". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved July 8, 2015.
  14. ^ Kent, Nick (20 October 1979). "Fleetwood Mac: Tusk (Warner Brothers)". New Musical Express. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  15. ^ Ward, Ed; Stokes, Geoffrey; Tucker, Ken (1986). Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll. New York: Rolling Stone Press. p. 578. ISBN 0-671-63068-7.
  16. ^ Carlin, Marcello (1 April 2004). "Cocaine Heights". Uncut. Archived from the original on 16 May 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  17. ^ Simon Reynolds (1995), FLEETWOOD MAC, Tusk from Unknown Pleasures: Great Lost Albums Rediscovered booklet, free with Melody Maker, 1995 [director's cut version]
  18. ^ Bennun, David (13 February 2017). "How Fleetwood Mac Invented Goth, By David Bennun". The Quietus. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  19. ^ Zaleski, Annie (27 September 2022). "Joni Mitchell's 80s: how the Canadian songwriter became a fearless, futurist auteur". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 29 July 2023.
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