25 Songs That Became Hits Years After They Were Released
Music used to have a fairly predictable life cycle.
Release the single.
Promote it.
Hope it charts.
Move on.
Streaming, films, TV and TikTok have destroyed that model.
A song can now become enormous:
five years later
ten years later
or even forty years later.
Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away” becoming TikTok’s Global Song of the Summer in 2026 — 15 years after its original single release — is simply the latest example.
Here are 25 more.
1. Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
Released: 1985
The song was already successful.
Then Stranger Things introduced it to an entirely new generation in 2022 and turned it into a global phenomenon.
2. Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
Released: 1977
A TikTok video involving a skateboard and cranberry juice helped send “Dreams” back into charts decades later.
3. Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Murder on the Dancefloor
Released: 2001
Its placement in Saltburn produced a spectacular global comeback more than two decades later.
4. Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
Released: 2004
TikTok and Anyone But You helped transform the song into a Gen Z favourite.
5. Miguel – Sure Thing
Released: 2010
A TikTok resurgence gave the song its biggest international chart success more than a decade later.
6. Tom Odell – Another Love
Released: 2012
Streaming and social media gradually turned a respected singer-songwriter track into a gigantic global catalogue song.
7. Arctic Monkeys – 505
Released: 2007
Never originally one of the band’s obvious biggest singles.
Streaming changed that completely.
8. Lady Gaga – Bloody Mary
Released: 2011
The song became associated with Wednesday edits more than a decade after appearing on Born This Way.
9. Beach House – Space Song
Released: 2015
A classic example of a non-mainstream track slowly becoming enormous through internet culture.
10. Djo – End of Beginning
Released: 2022
The track broke globally well after its original album release when TikTok users rediscovered it.
11. Lizzy McAlpine – Ceilings
Released: 2022
Another album track that exploded after listeners built a social trend around it.
12. Doechii – Anxiety
Originally created: 2019
It waited years before going viral and receiving an official wide streaming release.
Doechii’s use of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” helped give the comeback another layer of recognition.
13. Jain – Makeba
Released: 2015
The song had multiple waves of popularity before another massive social-media resurgence years later.
14. The Weeknd – Die for You
Released: 2016
It wasn’t originally pushed as one of Starboy’s main singles.
Years later, streaming popularity transformed it into one of The Weeknd’s defining songs.
15. Glass Animals – Heat Waves
Released: 2020
Not quite a decade-long wait, but an unusually slow climb that demonstrated how streaming hits can grow for months instead of peaking instantly.
16. Empire of the Sun – We Are the People
Released: 2008
The song has experienced repeated waves of discovery through adverts, social media and streaming.
17. TV Girl – Lovers Rock
Released: 2014
A perfect example of an indie catalogue track becoming vastly bigger with younger streaming audiences.
18. Cigarettes After Sex – Apocalypse
Released: 2017
Years of social-media discovery turned it into one of the band’s biggest recordings.
19. Mac DeMarco – Chamber of Reflection
Released: 2014
Its second life online ultimately became bigger than its original indie release cycle.
20. Chris Rainbow – Be Like a Woman
A particularly striking 2026 example.
TikTok’s UK summer report says the late Scottish artist found a new audience decades after the song’s original era, even earning posthumous chart attention.
21. Kyla – Do You Mind
Released: 2008/09
Sampled by Drake in 2016.
Then revived yet again and named TikTok’s UK Song of the Summer 2026.
Three separate lives for one record.
22. Zara Larsson – Lush Life
Released: 2015
Already a hit originally.
A decade later, TikTok choreography helped push it back into charts and introduce it to a younger audience.
23. Oasis – Wonderwall
Released: 1995
Never exactly forgotten.
But the 2025 reunion and the 2026 World Cup gave the catalogue yet another mainstream resurgence.
24. Katy Perry – The One That Got Away
Released as a single: 2011
TikTok Global Song of the Summer: 2026.
That’s an extraordinary 15-year second act.
25. System of a Down – Johnny
Recorded around: 2001
A slightly different case.
Rather than becoming a newly viral hit, the long-time rarity finally received broad streaming availability during Toxicity’s 25th anniversary in 2026.
It shows that catalogue discovery isn’t limited to songs that were already easily available.
Why do old songs become hits now?
Four things dominate.
TikTok
A 15-second section can turn an unknown catalogue song into millions of searches.
TV and movies
Stranger Things and Saltburn demonstrated how powerful the right scene can be.
Streaming
Listeners can immediately play the entire song after discovering ten seconds of it.
Algorithms
Once listeners respond strongly, recommendation systems push the song further.
That creates a feedback loop.
Does release date matter anymore?
Less than ever.
To a 16-year-old discovering Kate Bush today, “Running Up That Hill” isn’t nostalgia.
It’s simply a good song they haven’t heard before.
That’s the key.
The internet contains essentially the entire history of recorded music.
Every day, somebody hears an old song for the first time.
The biggest change
Music has stopped expiring.
That’s incredible for listeners.
And it means the next global hit might not be sitting in a recording studio waiting to be released.
It may already have been released twenty years ago.
We just haven’t rediscovered it yet.