| Countdown | |
| Cover: | LBuckingham-Countdown.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Lindsey Buckingham |
| Album: | Out of the Cradle |
| B-Side: | This Nearly Was Mine |
| Released: | 1992 |
| Genre: | Rock |
| Length: | 3:21 |
| Label: | Reprise (North America), Mercury (Europe) |
| Producer: | Lindsey Buckingham, Richard Dashut |
| Chronology: | Lindsey Buckingham US |
| Prev Title: | Wrong |
| Prev Year: | 1992 |
| Next Title: | Soul Drifter |
| Next Year: | 1992 |
"Countdown" is a song by Lindsey Buckingham, released in 1992 from his third solo album Out of the Cradle. In the UK, "Countdown" was released in July as the album's first single,[1] although in North America, "Wrong" was released as the first single instead.[2] While the song did not chart on the UK Singles Chart or the US Billboard Hot 100,[3] it appeared on Billboard's Mainstream Rock and Adult Contemporary charts. Elsewhere, "Countdown" charted in Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Buckingham recorded his guitar parts on a Fender Telecaster with fuzz and a variable speed oscillator (VSO). He used the VSO to slow down the speed of the tape recorder, which in Buckingham's estimation provided a "crystalline" quality to the guitar. During the mixing process, producer Tom Lord-Alge attempted to thicken the sound of the guitar, although Buckingham convinced him to abandon the idea, insisting that the instrument should "sting like a bee."[4]
Mike DeGagne of AllMusic commented that "Countdown" possesses the "pop-catchy appeal of past hits like "Trouble" and "Go Insane" at one level, yet it maintains an enriched, dynamic feel, as if Buckingham has progressed and bettered himself as a solo artist. "Countdown" is an excellent delegate to the kind of music Buckingham is capable of, and it contains a lot of the same constituents that made him such an integral part of the second wave of Fleetwood Mac."[5] Jean Rosenbluth of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was "hard not to be swayed by the singer’s practically palpable optimism" on "Countdown".[6]