Caillat told Music Radar:

Christine started playing something she had written on the piano one day, and it floored me. It was so beautiful and special, so personal – I knew I had to get just the right recording of it. Before Rumours, I had recorded an album with Joni Mitchell at the Berkeley Community Theatre. I thought doing a similar kind of concert recital recording was perfect for Songbird. Christine and the whole band loved the idea.

The Berkley Community Theatre wasn’t available, so we used the Zellerbach Auditorium, the same kind of vibe. Christine sat on the stage and played a nine-foot Steinway, and she sounded magnificent. I used 15 tracks for the piano – two close mics and the rest were distant mics. For something like ‘Songbird,’ I wanted the room to really speak.

Rolling Stone named it the #19 greatest Fleetwood Mac song, saying:

It took Christine McVie only 30 minutes to write this lovely piano ballad. ‘I wrote the chords and the words and the melody almost as if it was coming from someone else and not me,’ she said. It was recorded in the empty Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley and used as the B side to ‘Dreams.’ In his autobiography, Fleetwood said, ‘We wanted the song to sound like Chris was singing it at the end of the night, after a show to an empty house.’ The song hit especially hard for its author’s ex. ‘When Christine played “Songbird,” grown men would weep,’ said John McVie. ‘I did every night.’