TikTok has spent most of the 2020s turning itself into the loudest accelerant in online culture. What started as a platform for dance challenges and meme loops has grown into a pipeline that carries entire scenes toward mainstream attention.
Whether people like it or not, the app has written the opening paragraphs of countless careers. It helped turn artists like PinkPantheress and EsDeeKid into global names, revived long-buried indie records from bands like Korea Girl and Everyone Asked About You, and pushed niche corners of the internet such as Bladee or Yung Lean into something close to subculture dominance.
The platform now sits in an uneasy position after the United States placed it under a de jure nationwide ban in January 2025 over fears of data collection and foreign interference. The ban has yet to be enforced, but it placed the app under a spotlight that feels both hostile and curious. Governments may not know what to do with TikTok, but the app’s power over music discovery remains undeniable. If the U.S. government cannot let go of it, how much harder would it be to ignore the artists who command millions of listeners in real time?Five songs in particular broke through the noise this year, according to TikTok’s latest year end trend report. They moved past meme cycles and landed in the center of a wider pop conversation. Each one shows how TikTok can warp, amplify, or completely redirect a track’s destiny when the right clip hits at the right second.
Doechii, ‘Anxiety’
Doechii already held a reputation as one of rap’s sharpest shapeshifters, but 2019’s “Anxiety” pushed her into a different tier. The track, which ranks at number 9 on TikTok’s Top Global Songs of 2025, became her first Top 10 hit and carried a reach that surprised even longtime fans. Built from the guitar riff popularized by Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” which itself sampled Brazilian musician Luiz Bonfa’s “Seville,” the song created a strange lineage of repetition that somehow worked in its favor. The sample of a sample built a familiarity that traveled fast across different timelines. TikTok pushed it further by pairing the track with dance edits from K-pop stans and confession-style posts from people documenting panic attacks or burnout.
KATSEYE, ‘Gnarly’
The global K-pop machine has turned quick takeoff into an art form, and KATSEYE might be its most dramatic example this year.
With the girl group dubbed TikTok’s Global Artist of the Year for 2025,“Gnarly” became KATSEYE’s sharpest breakout track, lifted by the momentum of their sophomore album Beautiful Chaos. The single hit TikTok like a jolt, spreading through sped-up edits and choreography clips that turned the song into a fixture on the app’s For You Page. Their rise felt engineered for virality, but the speed of it still caught people off guard. “Gnarly” became the type of song that no one planned to hear daily, but everyone ended up absorbing through the sheer weight of repetition.
The track set KATSEYE apart from the rest of the crowded K-pop field and helped position them as one of 2025’s defining global forces.
Radiohead, ‘Let Down’
Radiohead’s presence on TikTok would have sounded ridiculous a decade ago. Yet in 2025, “Let Down,” ranked number 17 at the Top 20 Global Songs of the Year, a deep cut from 1997’s OK COMPUTER, became a full-blown phenomenon three decades after its release. The track resurfaced through anime edits, late-night heartbreak posts, and guitar tutorials trying to decode its interlocking riffs. It became the sad-boy soundtrack of the year, all while the album that criticized technological alienation became one of TikTok’s most shared relics.
The trend pushed Radiohead into the feeds of a younger generation who may not have been alive when the record came out. “Let Down” proved that TikTok’s algorithm can resurrect any song with enough emotional pressure behind it.
sombr, ‘back to friends’
American pop newcomer sombr had one of the strangest ascents this year. Memes joked that he “was invented last Thursday,” yet his track “back to friends,”named TikTok’sGlobal Most-Saved Track of 2025, refused to fade. The song blends doomed synths with an aching vocal delivery that has the pull of a diary entry turned inside out. It became an instant backdrop for clips about heartbreak, reunions, and ride-or-die friendships.
Despite the melodrama of the trend, the song found a foothold on radio stations all over. It was the type of breakout that seemed impossible to categorize, part sad-boy confession and part festival-ready pop. sombr rode the wave with a confidence that suggested he understood his arrival was absurd, but also the start of something larger.
Connie Francis, ‘Pretty Little Baby’
In July, Connie Francis passed away at age 87, but her music found a shocking new life months before her death when “Pretty Little Baby” became TikTok’s Top Global Song of 2025, racking up more than 28 million posts and over 68 billion total views across uploads from Nara Smith, Kylie Jenner, and Ariana Greenblatt. Two official audios held millions of clips each, while scattered unofficial uploads collected thousands more.
The frenzy showed how TikTok can turn even the most traditional pop recordings into viral benchmarks. “Pretty Little Baby” did not follow the usual revival pattern. It was not used for nostalgia bait or meme edits but instead for soft-focus videos about daily routines, family life, and makeup transformations. The track found relevance because users decided it carried a sweetness that modern pop rarely reaches. It became a reminder that older music can still level the playing field on an app designed for speed.
