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When Fleetwood Mac fired Lindsey Buckingham in 2018 and replaced him with Neil Finn, he had some adjusting to do. The Crowded House frontman recently spoke about the difficulty of learning someone else's songs during a visit to the Broken Record podcast and revealed the song that ultimately got cut from the setlist because it was "blowing my voice out every night trying to [sing] it.”
“Learning somebody else's songs and the way they put songs together is really fascinating, getting deep inside it because you think you know the way that songs work, but then when you actually learn them, you find that there's more going on than you realized,” he explained. “And they're harder to learn other people's songs too, the little nuances that they add.”
When asked if there were any songs that were particularly challenging, Finn didn't hesitate. “Certainly, ‘Monday Morning,’” the singer said. “Just quite a strange song and a weird lyric as well.”
He went on to explain how the self-titled album track had “so much singing, and it's really high and it's very hard to sing. It's because there's no gaps in the vocal [to take a breath].”
It got to the point where Finn had to talk to the band about it, telling them “I don't think I can do that one unless we drop the key quite a bit.” Since he was “blowing [his] voice out every night trying to do it,” Fleetwood Mac decided to drop the song from the setlist.
Finn played his final concert with Fleetwood Mac on November 20, 2019. Christine McVie tragically died three years later, which caused the band to break up. Finn is still actively touring with Crowded House.
Listen to the full podcast episode below.