Got a Hold on Me
1984 single by Christine McVie

"Got a Hold on Me" is a song by Christine McVie, released as the lead single from her eponymous second solo album in 1984. Synthesizers on the track were played by Steve Winwood, while the guitars were played by Todd Sharp (the song's co-writer) and McVie's Fleetwood Mac bandmate Lindsey Buckingham. George Hawkins handled some of the song's background vocals.
Sharp recalled that he wrote the song with McVie section by section over the course of 30 minutes and had identified the song's commercial viability upon hearing the first verse. McVie stated that the song's subject matter was fictional, saying that "at the time I wrote it, no one did have a hold on me."
Release
The song reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary and Rock Tracks charts for four and two weeks, respectively. During the week of 20 January 1984, the song was added to 92 album oriented rock (AOR) radio stations in the United States, amounting to over 50% of all AOR stations that reported their airplay to Radio & Records. In the 10 March 1984 edition of Billboard, Paul Grein noted that it was the first time any member of Fleetwood Mac had achieved a number one hit on the Adult Contemporary chart.
In 1985, "Got a Hold on Me" received a most-performed-song citation at BMI's 33rd annual award dinner, which commemorated songs licensed by BMI that received heavy airplay in 1984.
The video for the song was produced by Jon Roseman and directed by Mike Brady. Shot in both black-and-white and color, it is a pseudo-performance video showing Christine McVie in a mansion-like room singing at her piano while a backup band appears in silhouette shadows on the walls around her.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Got a Hold on Me” as 1984 single by Christine McVie. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1984 single by Christine McVie. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5587691. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Got a Hold on Me” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.