TikTok video catapults Fleetwood Mac's Dreams back up the charts

More than forty years since its original release, Fleetwood Mac's Dreams is back on the charts, thanks to a viral video posted on TikTok. 

Dreams, which was a chart-topper upon its release in 1977, had its best streaming week of all time in the week ending Oct. 1, according to Billboard. The song gained 8.47 million streams in the U.S., up 125 per cent from the previous week, when it had 3.76 million. In Canada, the song sits at No. 47 on Spotify's Top 50, No. 21 in Apple's Top 100 and at No. 15 on Shazam's most-searched tracks. 

That bump came primarily from 37-year-old Nathan Apodaca, an Idaho father of two and labourer at a potato warehouse. On Sept. 25, Apodaca — under the TikTok handle 420doggface208 — shared a video in which he's seen longboarding down a highway, sipping from a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice, with Dreams playing in the background. 

The post soon racked up over 20 million views on the TikTok app, adding millions more when the footage was shared on Twitter.

It has spawned numerous recreations, including one by the band's co-founder Mick Fleetwood, who created a TikTok account to join in. 

As of Tuesday morning, his version had more than 6 million views. "@420doggface208 had it right," Fleetwood wrote as the video's caption.

"Dreams and cranberry just hits different."

This isn't the first time Dreams has seen a resurgence in popularity.

In March 2018, a widely circulated tweet in which the song was dubbed over footage of a college dance team performing on a track field pushed download sales for the song up 36 per cent. That instance saw the track jump to roughly two million streams and 2,000 download sales in the U.S.

Billboard's report this week puts current download sales for Dreams at 7,000.

Rumours, the album that Dreams first appeared on, has also moved up the Billboard 200 albums chart to 27.

It's the first time the album been in the top 40 since 2013. Three years ago, it also saw a rebound in popularity when another track — The Chain — was used in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

TikTok as a hitmaker

Though older songs can return to the spotlight in myriad ways, TikTok's emergence as a musical tastemaker has made it a popular platform for resurfacing previously released tracks. 

Earlier this year, Matthew Wilder's 1980s hit Break My Stride trended on TikTok, catapulting the song into Spotify's Viral 50 playlist and Apple Music's Top 100 chart.

Around the same time, L'Trimm's Cars with the Boom — released in 1988 — made a huge comeback after it was featured in millions of videos on the app.

That effect is even more powerful with tracks released in the more recent past.

Lizzo's Truth Hurts was already two years old when it found fame on TikTok, catapulting the American singer to eight  nominations and three wins at the 2020 Grammys.

Rock band Paramore's 2009 track All I Wanted moved back into the spotlight after a TikTok trend earlier this summer and Canadian musician CARYS (Aviva Mongillo) saw her 2017 song Princesses Don't Cry become a viral sensation in late 2019 after it trended on the app.

Dreams' time in the spotlight has done more than just help Fleetwood Mac. After his video went viral, Apodaca received more than $10,000 US in donations once fans discovered he's been living in an RV with no running water. 

Several days later, juice-maker Ocean Spray gifted Apodaca a truck, fully stocked with bottles of his favourite Cran-Raspberry drink.

Apodaca had earlier told the Los Angeles Times he was planning to spend part of the donated money on car repairs. He had originally made the Dreams video while longboarding to work because his car battery had died.