Rock band Fleetwood Mac, which got its start in the 1960s, is having an honest-to-goodness music charts revival thanks to a college dance troupe from Mississippi and a meme.
In late March, Twitter user @bottledfleet shared a video of the Alcorn State University color guard dancing to the 1977 Fleetwood Mac song “Dreams” with a quippy caption.
Https://twitter.com/bottledfleet/status/976864863329931265?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Farts-and-entertainment%2Fwp%2F2018%2F04%2F04%2Fhow-a-black-college-dance-troupe-landed-a-decades-old-fleetwood-mac-song-on-the-billboard-charts%2F
Since then, the post has been retweeted over 140,000 times, liked nearly 335,000 times, and the video has been viewed well over 6 million times.
But the meme hasn’t just propelled the Alcorn State’s Golden Girls dancers to fame, it has also given Fleetwood Mac fresh relevance. “Dreams” is back on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, coming in at No. 16 on its Hot Rock Songs chart. The song also saw a 36% increase in downloads the week after the video was uploaded, according to Billboard, and gained 1.9 million on-demand streams.
Of course, this is not the first time a meme has caused the resurgence of a song—countless people have been forced to listen to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” as a result of being ‘rickrolled.’
Moral of the story: never underestimate the branding power of a good meme.