Matthew Horton reads too much into yesterday’s comment pieces.

Interesting - if slight - editorial schism on the Guardian site this week, where hooded claw Maggoty Lamb (via the late Charlie Gillett) pinpoints the mid-80s demise of the NME to its desertion of black music, while Michael Hann, current editor of the physical Guardian's Friday Film & Music pullout, lets slip the dropping of UK urban albums from his reviews section. In the comments area of a piece about divisive cash-for-reviews company The Men From The Press, Hann admits his roster of writers lacks specialist knowledge of R&B and hip hop, so prefers to avoid rather than cover with half an arse.

The Guardian's shift is governed by market forces, of course - if budgets are slashed, niche freelancers go down the tubes, and their niche concerns with them. Hann is at pains to point out that urban music is given ample space in dedicated features, and fair enough, but these are necessarily occasional. At the same time, last Friday's reviews included albums by bastions of commerce Wooden Shjips, The Ruby Suns and Peggy Sue; hardly sops to the advertisers. Hann steers a strong team of writers, but if he's losing whole genres because he cannot afford to pay specialist freelancers, perhaps the contracted group needs a shake-up instead?

Naturally, the Guardian is not obliged to cover anything it doesn't think its readers want. Still, there's a sense of glee in Maggoty Lamb's reporting of Gillett's told-you-so to the NME (and its immediate rivals). As ML says, Gillett decried the established rock press's blithe avoidance of black music, flinging the accusation that they had "abandoned everything [they] were meant to be doing" and confessing he was "glad" that the more inclusive likes of Smash Hits had triumphed in the landgrab.

Its rivals have gone the way of all inkies, but the NME ploughs on in its pallor, unrecognisable from the weighty wodge of rancorous paper that in 1985 voted Marvin Gaye's What's Going On the greatest album of all time. They know what their readers want. But do their readers know themselves? Opportunistic flirtations with Arctic Monkeys and Calvin Harris, plus a shrewd willingness to play the game, have flipped Dizzee Rascal into the mainstream, onto the NME's cover and over the indie kids' kneejerk defences. He needn't be a one-off. Until there's a sea-change in editorial policy, there can be more happy confluences of events.

Presumably Film & Music's readers are neither buying the Friday paper for its dense coverage of urban music, nor turning away for any lack of it, but it couldn't hurt to have the variety. Even if the newspaper has no moral (or commercial) reason to bear responsibility for black music's national profile, the fact that its contributors can recognise - by mild endorsement of opinion - the potential pitfalls of tacit sacrifice of an entire genre surely calls for some searching of the soul.

Fleetwood Mac aren’t all about Rumours, and Tusk wasn’t the crazed disaster of lore. Ed Whatley kicks over some statues.

My copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was bought from the Music & Video Exchange in London's fashionable Notting Hill Gate. On the sticker was the price, and some wag's inscription – "Better than Pet Sounds". Pet Sounds is of course critical shorthand for "best of top 5 shoo-in", and Brian Wilson's name spoken only in hushed, awed tones.

In the years since, more and more people have come to agree. And the mega-multi-maxi-selling slice of pure 70s soft gold has gone from critically discarded guilty pleasure back to the top of any music fan’s iCanon, sometimes accompanied by its predecessor, the eponymous first outing for the Rumours line-up.

But let's go a little further. Fleetwood Mac were the greatest band of the American 70s. That they managed this while selling over 40 million albums is proof that sometimes the man in the street gets it spectacularly right. The reason they were the greatest is Lindsey Buckingham. And while his silverspring genius was all over Fleetwood Mac and Rumours, it's the records that bookended those two that seal the deal. Tusk - a four million seller you always saw in charity shops throughout the 90s, and Buckingham Nicks - Lindsey and Stevie's little known pre-Mac flop.

Tusk is a ridiculous record. It's three entirely different albums made to hang out with each other like a brat, a teen and tween at a family gathering. Who, it turns out, get along like a house on fire. Christine McVie plays her haunted blues ballads, dressed up in the slickest LA finery, straight and grave. Stevie Nicks' confidence and ability peak on reverb and white magic masterpieces like Sara and Beautiful Child.

Then there's Lindsey - the brat, ADDing all over the place on 40 cups of squash (all right, it wasn't squash). Some of his songs sound like a rat in a box, screeching and hitting the sides. The tightest, best musicians in LA making up what they thought punk sounded like without ever having heard it. His gift for the mellifluous doesn't get a look-in. This is the sound of someone flicking the Vs at a decade of he and his contemporaries flattening everything into a haze of FM bliss, but unable to stop it sounding just as glorious.

Six years previously, at the other end of the landslide of success, you have Buckingham Nicks. Free of the celeb rhythm section, this is the purest shot of Lindsey you can get. It is diaphanous finger-picked blissed-out magic from start to finish. If you're a guitarist, you'd better be up to scratch if you name a song Django and you don't want to end up shooting rats in a train yard. For some unimaginable reason, it's been out of print for years. But do yourself a solid and download it.

You might want to make a case for someone else being the greatest of the era. Neil Young, Dylan, Steely Dan, Wonder. I'm sticking with Lindsey and Stevie.