Who doesn’t love Rumours? It’s impossible to resist. The artsy-fartsy cover with Mick Fleetwood’s dangling balls and Stevie Nicks’ feathered hair and showy cape. And the freewheelin’ California vibe of the rest of the band, just chilling out, some grass and white wine and whatever else you have just out of the camera’s range.

I picked up on the coolness and realness of this as a kid. It was just a much-cooler version of what I was seeing on TV. The drama and sexual politics of Stevie and Lindsey Buckingham was a hippie version of daytime soap operas that I watched every afternoon with my mom. I couldn’t figure out why, for example, Mary Anderson and Chris Kositchek on Days of Our Lives couldn’t be together when they were so clearly meant to be together (class differences, then he hit her with his car when he got Amanda pregnant, but I digress).

Stevie and Lindsey were similarly star-crossed but far more hip or with-it, and they had more thrilling explanations for why they couldn’t be together (“packing up, shaking up’s all you want to do” vs. “playin’”). Even better, they replayed their drama every time you dropped the needle on “Second Hand News,” which led into “Dreams,” and you know the rest. They got stuck in that mess for years—even Tusk couldn’t get them out of it—and they’re still stuck in it, decades later. And who can resist that?

In my mind, Rumours bisected the 70s. Before, women were singers singing someone else’s songs, and therefore weren’t taken seriously. After Rumours, women were part of the damn band. They were rich and glamorous, and they played around as much as the men, maybe more. Yes, Stevie and Lindsey and John and Christine (RIP) were couples (then separated) but the Fleetwood Mac women had more successful solo careers and took the lead on more of the band’s singles than their partners. You can dismiss Stevie Nicks for her shawls and lace, New Age witchiness, braying-goat voice, and some of her more tragic hairstyles, but she’s the draw, still. No one needed to explain that to me as a kid. Rumours has aged well—it really has! Give it a listen again and just try to resist.