Number of the Day
Fleetwood Mac’s TikTok-fueled Renaissance, by the Numbers
How Gen Z’s favorite app sent a Boomer song rocketing up the charts
8.47 million: That’s how many on-demand streams the 1977 Fleetwood Mac song “Dreams” garnered in the week ending October 1, according to Billboard. The song shot up the music charts — including the number one spot on iTunes — thanks to a viral TikTok of a man lip-syncing to the song while longboarding and drinking from a bottle of Ocean Spray. (Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood then did his own recreation of the viral video on TikTok.)
TikTok’s future in the United States remains in limbo after a federal judge put the White House’s attempt to ban the app on hold last week, adding confusion to an already murky plan to sell the company’s U.S. operations to Oracle and Walmart. But TikTok’s ability to send a Fleetwood Mac song rocketing ahead of Harry Styles’ latest on the charts points to the continued popularity and influence that TikTok has among American youth. Perhaps it’s only fitting that TikTok has given a 43-year-old song a boost at the same time that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and President Donald Trump, a couple of seventysomethings, attempt to wrest control of the company from its Chinese owners.
Trump probably has things other than TikTok to worry about right now.
