By Amelia Edwards, Fourth Year, English and French
Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’ has been leaving emotional craters since 1997. In 2025, the song has gone viral on TikTok. Here’s how one of the band’s most depressingly beautiful tracks has captivated a new generation, almost three decades after its initial release.
In 2020, TikTok was all about goofy dances and quick-hit trends. This year, the app’s viral soundtrack is Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’ — a twenty-eight-year-old track layering lyrics of capitalist burnout over haunting instrumentals. Featured in the season one finale of The Bear (2022), it’s the perfect musical backdrop to moments of quiet catharsis. So, how did a ‘90s rock song about existential disappointment become the anthem of Gen Z’s nostalgia loop?
As recycled aesthetics flood our For You Pages — from ‘70s psychedelic prints to VSCO filters — pop culture feels like a nonstop series of reruns. A musical throwback to 1997 feels perfectly on-brand for our current obsession with the past— a grounding reminder that society has always carried with it a sense of doom, even during the eras we wish we could return to.
As the threats of climate change, global conflict, and far-right politics continue to rise, it’s no wonder one of Radiohead’s most disillusioned hits has become our escapist vessel of choice.
In the wake of controversy surrounding Thom Yorke’s stance on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’ has, ironically, become this year’s emblem during politically turbulent times. The lyrics themselves — ‘crushed like a bug in the ground’ — perfectly capture the pessimism felt by many amidst the global chaos of the last decade.
In 2021, just under three quarters of young people in the UK felt that the ‘future (was) frightening’, whilst almost a third expressed mistrust in governments. Since then, events have only escalated.
However, hidden beneath ‘the emptiest of feelings’, the song also carries a faint sense of hope: ‘One day, I am gonna grow wings’. With its wistful longing to escape monotony, ‘Let Down’ feels like a distant cry for a better future somewhere else. The song’s bittersweet magnetism and TikTok popularity has recently placed it on the Billboard Hot 100, overlaid onto thousands of the internet’s most personal, authentic, and human accounts of emotional letdown.
The trend also spawns heartbreaking, AI-generated slideshows of tragic film couples, like Me Before You’s Will Traynor and Louisa Clark, smiling in a selfie with their fictional child. Even classics of alternative rock can’t escape the tightening grip of artificial intelligence.
Videos posted to ‘Let Down’ walk a fine line between authenticity and a glossy, online version of romanticised sadness. The trend comes at a time of increasing mental health awareness, with a reported 1 in 5 young people suffering from a probable mental disorder in 2023.
The song going viral may reflect an attempt to feel connected in an age of doomscrolling, short-lived dopamine hits, and social isolation. At the same time, turning a pre-internet song into a TikTok trend comes with an undeniable sense of irony.
As society backtracks to seemingly simpler times, retro revivals now have the potential to overshadow the latest hits. TikTok offers a wide-reaching platform for new and established artists alike, but it also condenses songs into their most mainstream-friendly, thirty-second clips. Going viral is a double-edged sword, attracting new fans whilst also undermining — according to artists and cult fans — a song’s original meaning.
In the case of ‘Let Down’, its renewed popularity symbolises much more than Gen Z’s obsession with nostalgia. The song is a sought-after reflection of hopelessness, disappointment, and a desire for authenticity in a time when, for many, the world feels like it’s heading in the opposite direction.
Featured Image: XL RecordingWhich song do you predict will face a TikTok resurgence next?
