Tango in the Night is the fourteenth studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 13 April 1987 by Warner Records.

[5] After the completion of the Mirage Tour in 1982, four members of Fleetwood Mac released five solo albums, with varying degrees of success.

[7] In 1985, Christine McVie was asked to record a cover of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" for the soundtrack of the movie A Fine Mess.

The band booked Studio One and rehearsed for a week without Stevie Nicks, who was in Australia touring with Tom Petty and Bob Dylan.

[11][12] After the release of Mirage, John McVie had spent much of his time sailing the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas and barely played bass in the years leading up to the making of Tango in the Night.

In an attempt to be more productive in the studio, he quit drinking cold turkey, though this proved to be unsuccessful, and he grew concerned that he had lost his ability to play.

"[9] Buckingham created most of the album's vocal harmonies through extensive overdubbing and also utilised the Fairlight CMI for additional sonic textures.

[18] Some of Buckingham's compositions on Tango in the Night, including "Big Love" and "Family Man", were originally developed for his shelved solo album.

These songs were mostly complete by the time Buckingham presented them to the band, although he recalled that "Family Man" was "sweetened up" during the mixing process.

[20] McVie remarked that the two "didn't sit down at a piano and decide the chords together" but believed that the creative process during Tango in the Night was more collaborative than their past efforts.

[1] All these tracks would eventually be released in the deluxe version of the album, with "You and I" parts I and II being combined into one song on disc two of the collection.

[10] "Ooh My Love", like "Juliet", eventually made its way onto The Other Side of the Mirror (with its demo also being included on the deluxe edition of Tango in the Night),[23] while "Joan of Arc" remains unreleased.

[27][28] According to Paolo Ragusa of Consequence, the painting mimics Rousseau's "studious approach to depicting motion and activity within a still, naturalistic container".

[28] He notes that although "the jungle flora, the twinkling water, and the distant animals" evoke a sense of "dreamy wanderlust and desire", the image is "frozen and vast", as though "what can disturb its peace is the arrival of a warm breeze".

[28] Similarly, Pitchfork's Ivy Nelson described the artwork as "so lush and romantic that it walks a fine line between formal elegance and kitsch, blending the terrestrial with the celestial".

[27] She regarded it as an "accurate illustration" of the album's sound design and of the "glitterings and humid shimmers that Buckingham placed in the songs".

With pressure on Buckingham to keep the project focused and moving forward, things came to a head shortly after the release of Tango in the Night, in April 1987.

At a band meeting at Christine McVie's house to discuss the accompanying tour, he announced his departure, which infuriated Nicks.

And, to his credit, he put aside everything that he'd dreamt of doing, including making his own album, for Fleetwood Mac, but then realised that he'd made a mistake... Lindsey was not being heard.

"[29] Buckingham partially attributed his decision to leave Fleetwood Mac to the rigours of touring, which he believed would have exacerbated the interpersonal turbulence experienced in the studio.

[23][31] Disc two of the collection features the B-sides "Ricky", "Down Endless Street", and "Book of Miracles"; both halves of "You and I", released and combined for the first time; and demos, alternate versions, and other recordings.

[23] The third disc features multiple remixes of "Big Love", "Seven Wonders", "Little Lies", "Family Man", and "Everywhere", either done by Arthur Baker or John "Jellybean" Benitez.

[37] Ivy Nelson of Pitchfork was complimentary of Buckingham and McVie's songs but reserved some criticism for Nicks, saying, "Her voice, invariably hoarse after years of cocaine abuse, often warps or fails the already incomplete material.

"[25] Robert Christgau thought that the album was an improvement over Mirage but failed to live up to the quality of the band's 1975 eponymous release and Rumours.

[41] Tango in the Night is the band's second-biggest-selling studio album[43] after the phenomenally successful Rumours, which was released ten years earlier.

The intervening albums, Tusk (1979) and Mirage (1982), although big sellers in key territories, had not matched their predecessor's huge success.