No. 717 – Go Insane

Performer: Lindsey Buckingham

Songwriter: Lindsey Buckingham

Original Release: Go Insane

Year: 1984

Definitive Version: None

I always thought that Lindsey Buckingham wrote this song about Stevie Nicks, but it was actually his longtime post-Stevie girlfriend.

After I broke up with Melanie, I had this happen to me for a while. Everywhere I went, I saw Melanie. It wasn’t purely a trick of my imagination, but I just kept making sure to particularly notice brunettes of medium height and build who in a tortured mind bore a resemblance that was close enough for my imagination to fill in the gaps.

Actually, I did this even more with Jenna, but that was more because I wanted to try and show people who never met her an example of what she (kind of) looked like, honest!

The worst moment of the post-Melanie period was in the spring of 1989 after I started working at the Daily Herald. I’d been there a few months when a new reporter was hired who … didn’t look just like Melanie but certainly could have been a relative. In fact, she looked more like Melanie than any other woman I had encountered.

Soon after she started, I introduced myself to her—maybe even the first day—which wasn’t something I typically did with reporters. The pretense was that I had worked with her a couple of times on stories over the phone (true), and now that she was in the newsroom, I was able to put a face to the name. The real reason, of course, was that she looked like Melanie, and I wanted to see if there was anything there. There wasn’t. She had a boyfriend.

I remember feeling very embarrassed and self-conscious after this encounter even though it wasn’t necessarily the wrong thing to do—nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But it was the rationale behind it that was the problem. I beat myself up good over that one and made it a point to avoid her for a while after that. It was an immature response to be sure, but first and foremost, I had to take care of my sanity.

I think it was at about this time that I saw the video for this song on MTV one night, and it totally hit home. I hear you, Lindsey. I know exactly what you mean.