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Fleetwood Mac · S9 E5
50 Years of Rumours
Anniversary tours, deluxe box sets, TikTok virality, and a new generation discovering the album on streaming
September 25, 2020. A man on a longboard coasts down an Idaho highway, sipping Ocean Spray cranberry juice and lip-syncing to "Dreams." The thirty-second TikTok sends a forty-three-year-old song back onto the Billboard Hot 100.
"Stand Back" (Stevie Nicks, official music video, 1983). Rumours didn't just sell records. It made every member of Fleetwood Mac a solo star. This is what that fame looked like for Stevie Nicks: a number-five hit built on a synth riff she heard in Prince's "Little Red Corvette" and sang into a tape recorder on the spot.
The Skateboard Heard Around the World
Nathan Apodaca was a thirty-seven-year-old potato warehouse worker in Idaho Falls when his truck broke down on the way to work. He grabbed his longboard, his Ocean Spray, and his phone, pressed play on "Dreams," and filmed himself cruising down the highway. The clip racked up tens of millions of views within days.
Sources
The New York Times. "The Man Behind the Fleetwood Mac TikTok Hit." October 2020.
Billboard. "Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams' Returns to Hot 100 After TikTok Viral Moment." October 2020.
TAP TO REVEAL: Which Fleetwood Mac members recreated the TikTok?
Stand Back, Stevie Nicks (1983)
Stevie heard Prince's "Little Red Corvette" on her car radio and a synth melody lodged in her head so hard she pulled over to record it. She called Prince, who showed up at the studio and played the synth part himself, uncredited. The track reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of her biggest solo hits. It's the clearest example of what Rumours did for her career: it gave her the confidence and the audience to go anywhere.
Sources
Davis, Stephen. "Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks." St. Martin's Press, 2017.
Nicks, Stevie. Interview with Rolling Stone, 2014.
Rumours: The 2020 Numbers
A New Generation
The TikTok moment did something no anniversary box set or VH1 retrospective had managed: it introduced Fleetwood Mac to an audience with zero nostalgia for the seventies. These listeners didn't come for the drama or the mythology. They came because a man on a skateboard looked happy, and the song underneath him sounded timeless.
Sources
Pitchfork. "How TikTok Gave Fleetwood Mac a Second Life." November 2020.
Think About Me, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
This is the song Spotify queues up after you've played "Dreams" ten times. Christine McVie wrote it as a bright pop song: clean keyboards, a chorus that sticks on the first listen, no complications. It's not on Rumours, but it's the kind of deep cut that streaming algorithms have turned into a quiet hit, accumulating millions of plays from listeners who came for the singles and stayed because the whole catalog is this good.
Think About Me, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
Where Stevie writes in symbols and Lindsey writes in abstractions, Christine just says what she means. She wants someone to think about her. No riddles, no poetry, just a direct request wrapped in a melody that makes it impossible to refuse. That simplicity is why her songs age so well: there's nothing to decode, just something to feel.
What was Nathan Apodaca's day job when his TikTok made "Dreams" go viral?
On July 25, 2020, just two months before that skateboard video, the man who started it all dies quietly in his sleep. Next: Peter Green, 1946 to 2020.
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