When the news broke that Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams was causing the band to grace the Billboard 200’s Top 10 again after 42 years, people could hardly believe it.
It’s return can be attributed to a popular TikTok video that surfaced of 37-year-old Nathan Apodaca riding his skateboard and drinking a bottle of Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice, using the song as an audio for the video.
According to an NPR article, Apodaca was on his daily commute to work when his truck broke down. Not wanting to wait for someone to show up, Apodaca grabbed his skateboard, and his juice, and headed to work. It was on his commute that he started filming the TikTok that would soon go viral.
It’s not the first time that there’s been a surge in “older” music. While there wasn’t a response like the one Fleetwood Mac got, younger people have been listening to The Beatles, Stevie Nicks, and The Rolling Stones for years, and calling it ‘cool’.
Just look at a couple of months ago, thousands were using the chorus of Taylor Swift’s 2008 bop Love Story as a catchy background sound. What started as a dance soon spread to all kinds of videos, ranging from marriage proposals to insane cliff jumps.
More recently, Aly & AJ saw a massive revival of their 2007 smash hit, Potential Breakup Song. The song grew to popularity again after @miagillespiee uploaded a video of her mom, and a few of her friend’s mom’s badly lip-syncing to the song. Since then, there have been hundreds of duets to the song. Other users have also reacted to the video, pretending to sing along while guessing what the mom’s kitchens, shoes, and even their bumper stickers would look like based on their asthetic.
The sad thing is that younger kids on the app only know these songs from TikTok. And its giving those of us who grew up with them a shocking whiplash. “Zillenials”, or the kids who were born in 1999-2000, and are the generation between Millenials and Gen Z, have recently been describing themselves as “feeling old”. We hear these songs that (for the most part), we grew up with and it’s like we’re eight years old again. And to see it reduced to a mere dance or trend is a real shot to the heart.
So while these song revivals may be good for the artists behind the original hit, they also might be a stab in the gut to the fans. With that being said, there’s no denying the songs can be a healthy dose of nostalgia for some. And in these trying times, we can all use a boost of serotonin.