{"id":25068,"date":"2025-08-26T20:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T20:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/25068\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T20:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T20:39:07","slug":"a-radiohead-song-from-1997-is-on-the-hot-100-charts-thanks-to-tiktok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/25068\/","title":{"rendered":"A Radiohead song from 1997 is on the Hot 100 charts, thanks to TikTok"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to an unexpected surge in popularity on TikTok, Radiohead now has its fourth-ever song on the Billboard Hot 100: the morosely gorgeous track \u201cLet Down<\/a>\u201d from the 1997 album \u201cOK Computer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet Down\u201d never broke through to mainstream attention like Radiohead\u2019s \u201cCreep\u201d or \u201cKarma Police,\u201d but it\u2019s by no means a deep cut, like the Pavement B-side \u201cHarness Your Hopes<\/a>\u201d that went viral due to a quirk in Spotify\u2019s recommendation algorithm. This Radiohead song is a fan favorite from an album that\u2019s considered among the best rock records<\/a> of all time.<\/p>\n

Unlike the rise of songs like Kate Bush\u2019s \u201cRunning Up That Hill<\/a>\u201d or Fleetwood Mac\u2019s \u201cDreams<\/a>,\u201d this song isn\u2019t just serving as background music for makeup tutorials and recipe videos. Instead, people are tapping into how haunting the song feels. It\u2019s crushingly sad, yet there\u2019s an earnest hopefulness to it, and the desire to escape that sadness makes the pain feel even more acute.<\/p>\n

I first encountered this trend when my TikTok algorithm served me \u2014 an obsessive Philadelphia Phillies and Radiohead fan \u2014 with a video that seemed like it could have been created in a lab to make me cry. It\u2019s a montage of Zack Wheeler, the steadfast ace of the Phillies\u2019 pitching rotation, who will soon undergo season-ending surgery, accompanied by a choral edit of \u201cLet Down,\u201d while lyrics are overlaid atop a Wheeler highlight reel: \u201cBouncing back and\/One day, I am gonna grow wings.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost a relief that this is not a case of TikTok\u2019s algorithm developing a mind of its own with a single-minded mission to destroy me (\u2026 that\u2019s not how AI works<\/a>, by the way!). <\/p>\n

All sorts of emotional videos are being set to \u201cLet Down,\u201d like edits of clips<\/a> from the Hunger Games movies. The song got a boost when it was used to score a scene in the season 1 finale<\/a> of \u201cThe Bear,\u201d and in May, a music TikTok account posted an edit of \u201cLet Down\u201d that includes vocals from a large chorus. That version of the song appears in many of these videos.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease make the saddest edit that ever exist [sic] with this overlay,\u201d the video<\/a>\u2018s caption reads. It has over 1 million likes.<\/p>\n

According to Google Trends<\/a>, interest in the song began to spike in the spring, steadily rising until now, when it\u2019s become popular enough to enter the Billboard charts.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:<\/strong>Google Trends (screenshot)<\/p>\n