Radiohead score Billboard hot 100 single with 28 year-old song thanks to TikTok

Radiohead have entered the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for only the fourth time in their 40-year career.

The band’s Let Down song was originally released as a single in 1997, the third from the OK Computer album, but it has just cracked the Hot 100 for the first time.

It currently sits at number 91 on the chart, after gaining viral traction on TikTok.

The song has had an outsize presence on the platform for months now, particularly considering it is one of Radiohead’s glummest-sounding tracks. TikTok posters appear to be leveraging that Radiohead “my heart is stuck down a well and can’t get out” vibe to add clout to their posts.

This marks only the fourth time Radiohead has dipped into the Hot 100 chart, the last being back in 2008 with the song Nude, off their In Rainbows album.

Billboard notes the chart ranking was achieved “almost entirely through streaming,” racking up 5.2 million US streams in a week, up to August 21st. And this follows many weeks of Let Down gaining streaming traction online.

Creep, which famously broke Radiohead in the US, actually clocks up significantly more streams per week. But thanks to the way the Billboard Hot 100 is calculated, it doesn’t quite have the juice to return to the chart — having already debuted on it in 1993 — according to Billboard data analyst Xander Zellner.

While the band has largely been dormant since 2018, when Radiohead played their last gig, 2025 has proved to be a year of surprising activity for the band.

As well as charting with a song older than most of the people posting it on TikTok, Radiohead released a Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009) live album this month. And an exhibition of the band’s decades-long collaboration with artist Stanley Donwood opened in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum earlier in August.

The CD and vinyl releases of Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009) begin shipping on August 31st too, should you want a physical copy.

The most exciting stuff still resides in the world of rumour, though. In March, speculation about a full return to Radiohead touring was ignited when the band’s members formed a new limited liability partnership, and later that month their management team appeared to donate Radiohead gig tickets to a charity.

None of that has panned out yet, and in a recent interview, Thom Yorke downplayed ideas of the band getting back in the studio any time soon. However, if or when the band do decide to tour again, there could be a surprising number of younger faces in the crowd judging by their apparent social media popularity.

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