Dreams, the 1977 single from Fleetwood Mac’s 40m-selling album Rumours, has re-entered the US charts thanks to a Twitter meme.
The song sits at No 16 on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart, following the much-shared Twitter post by the user bottledfleet, where the song is used to accompany footage of a marching band’s dance troupe.
“Fleetwood Mac’s music is so boring, you can’t even dance to it”
— i m m i g r ❀ n t (@bottledfleet) March 22, 2018
Me, an intellectual: pic.twitter.com/2QmrFycHy2
It was retweeted more than 130,000 times, prompting 2,000 downloads of Dreams and 1.9m streams, a 24% rise. Rumours, which topped Billboard’s Top Rock Albums for a record 31 consecutive weeks on its release, jumped to No 13 in that chart. In the UK album chart, meanwhile, Rumours went from No 49 to 31 in its 725th week in the Top 100, while The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac went from No 27 to 17, chalking up its 328th week.
It’s not the first song to benefit from meme culture. US producer Baauer reached No 1 in the US in 2012 with his track Harlem Shake after it became the backing for a web video dance craze, while Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up got a second lease of life after it was used to prank – or “rickroll” – internet users. Smash Mouth’s 1999 hit All Star, meanwhile, remains an inexplicable touchstone for meme-makers.
