(October 18, 2020). TikTok has done it again (eat your heart out 45!). The popular short-form video app has revived yet another hit record from the distant past despite POTUS 45’s recent efforts to ban it (the app, not the song) in America.
The song is the 1977 chart-topping hit by Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams,” which re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 last week thanks to a viral video of an Idaho man named Nathan Apodaca who goes by the TikTok handle @420doggface208 (yeah “handle” was a thing back in ‘77, too).
The album is Rumours, which this week re-enters the top ten of the Billboard 200 for the first time since 1978.
A few weeks ago, “stoned dad” @420Doggface208 posted a video of himself longboarding and drinking a large 64-oz. jug of Ocean Spray cran-raspberry juice while soundtracked by the Mac’s former No. 1 record. The unexpected viral-worthy moment was when he began to lip-sync to the Stevie Nicks line: “it’s only right that you should play the way you feel it” (how many of you knew those were the exact lyrics?). Better question: how many more of us – male or female – have ever channeled our inner-Stevie Nicks by mouthing or even singing the lyrics to her many bewitching tunes, this one included. No wonder Doggface struck such a nerve.
Apodaca’s video has since garnered tens of millions of views on TikTok and millions more on YouTube.
The renewed interest in “Dreams” has propelled the song to re-enter the Hot 100 chart at No. 21. (Billboard policy allows a decades-old song like “Dreams” to re-chart even if it’s not being marketed currently by the label as long as it sustains growth in multiple metrics over multiple weeks and has enough points to reach the top half of the Hot 100, all of which “Dreams” does). The song’s last appearance on the chart was in August 1977, after a four-month stay that saw it peak at No. 1 that June.
”Dreams” has recently climbed as high as No. 2 on the Rolling Stone Top 100 thanks to its revival.
As far as 43-year-old tunes go, Apodaca could’ve done a lot worse in picking the one that would change his life (even if only for 15 minutes of fame) and boost Fleetwood Mac’s chart fortunes once again. After all, “Dreams” has held up well in the decades since its release, more so than many of the other No. 1 hits from 1977, plus the band still performs it at all their concerts (I can’t say the same for my personal Mac fave, 1982’s “Hold Me”).
Read about Rumours: Here’s a 40th anniversary tribute to Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece.
Rumours, which includes “Dreams” and three other top ten hits (“Go Your Own Way,” “Don’t Stop” and “You Make Lovin’ Fun”) along with several other album-rock radio classics (“The Chain,” “Never Going Back Again” and “Gold Dust Woman”) was the biggest-selling album of 1977, spending 31 weeks at No. 1 in ‘77/78. The only non-soundtrack album to spend longer at No. 1 than Rumours is Michael Jackson’s Thriller (37 weeks in 1983/84). As a result of this “Dreams” resurrection, plus tag-along streams from other album tracks, Rumours, which has sold more than 40 million copies, has been climbing back up the album chart – moving from No. 47-27-13-7 in the past three weeks!
Apodaca’s TikTok video bid for instant fame is what sparked all of this, but the sustained growth is no doubt due to what Fleetwood Mac members Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks plus TikTok have done with the opportunity since.
First, band founder and drummer Mick Fleetwood made his own viral video by recreating Apodaca’s clip. Then lead singer Nicks made her own video where she is seen lacing up a pair of skates – hinting that she, too, is about to join in on the longboarding fun – as “Dreams” plays in the background.
See the viral impact of the video here.
Finally, TikTok spun the videos into a commercial (for the app itself, but again with “Dreams” as the soundtrack), which aired during some key telecasts this past week, including the MLB playoffs and the 2020 Billboard Music Awards.
“Dreams” is a great song and all, but its current fortunes, which are growing with each passing week, wouldn’t have happened without Apodaca’s original video. And, so far as we know, the only thing the potato warehouse laborer has gotten out of it – besides some fleeting notoriety – is a pickup truck and a truck bed full of perishable Ocean Spray products…both courtesy of Ocean Spray.
That would be like Walmart gifting James Wright Chanel two years’ supply of Patti LaBelle’s Sweet Potato Pie, without the viral video maker who made her pies famous getting anything from Miss Patti herself.
You remember five years ago when the legendary soul singer LaBelle initially took sole credit for the skyrocketing $11M sales of her famous Sweet Potato Pie after Mr. Chanel went viral with a hilarious YouTube video review of the dessert. Patti was clapped back to reality by the many viewers who knew where the credit really lie and she ultimately came around, even inviting Chanel to her home for Thanksgiving and lavishing him with gifts. Chanel later began making the celebrity rounds with LaBelle and for the next few years, he became somewhat of a celebrity himself.
I doubt Mr. Apodaca, the Idaho potato laborer who loves all kinds of music according to a recent LA Times article, would enjoy the same kind of attention that Chanel received, but the least the members of Fleetwood Mac could do is give him (and his Mom, whose love of Stevie Nicks inspired the video) front row seats and a backstage pass to one of their next concerts at the city of his choosing (in a post-COVID world, of course).
Or maybe Stevie could invite him and his Mom to her home in Los Angeles and they could hear stories of how she came up with “Dreams” (breakup with Fleetwood Mac’s former member Lindsey Buckingham), or the real scoop behind why Buckingham isn’t with the group anymore after leaving nearly three years ago.
Or perhaps she could wax even more eloquently on how (in her recent words) her 1979 abortion allowed Fleetwood Mac to continue or how a recent one-time Botox injection made the 72-year-old belladonna look like “Satan’s angry daughter” (again, her words, not mine).
Hey, do you think if I did a video of myself walking on a treadmill and singing her 1983 hit “Stand Back,” it would go viral?
Hmmm.
DJRob
DJRob is a freelance blogger from Chicago who covers R&B, hip-hop, pop and rock genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Twitter @djrobblog.
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