The 10-year-old song that keeps getting bigger

The final song on LA band Lord Huron’s second album flew well under the mainstream radar when it was released in 2015. A decade on, it’s one of the most unlikely success stories in music.

Beyoncé and Dua Lipa may be two of the world’s top pop stars, and both put out new albums last year, but their biggest songs of 2024 did not match the popularity of a 10-year-old track by Lord Huron, according to the official Billboard global end-of-year singles chart.

And Charli XCX may have ruled Brat summer, but her biggest hit still wasn’t as big as The Night We Met by Lord Huron in the UK last year.

(The Night We Met was 35th on Billboard’s global chart for 2024, above Dua’s Houdini at 37 and Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em at 41; and it was 60th on the UK Official Chart Company’s end-of-year rundown, while Charli’s Guess was her biggest hit single at 73.)

Meanwhile, the Lord Huron song is in the exclusive club of tracks that have racked up three billion Spotify plays – a club even Taylor Swift isn’t in yet.

Videos featuring The Night We Met have had another three billion views on TikTok, according to music data tracker Chartmetric.

“It’s unbelievable,” says Lord Huron frontman Ben Schneider of the popularity of his song, which has snowballed in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down.

It’s not unusual for old songs to become perennial favourites on streaming and social media (see The Killers, Fleetwood Mac and Tom Odell).

What is much rarer is for it to happen to a track that was not a hit the first time around. And The Night We Met was nowhere near.

The aching ballad closed Lord Huron’s second LP of indie folk, Strange Trails, which was well received by the group’s loyal fanbase and critics, but only grazed the US album chart.

The song was written as “a wistful reflection of a relationship, maybe with a sense of regret of where it’s ended up and where it started”, Schneider explains.

“I remember writing that song and feeling like it was a very concise way to end a record. And I remember my wife saying she thought there was something really special to it. But years went by and it wasn’t like it was a hit or anything.

“And then things just started to happen with it.”

The first thing to happen was for it to be used on the soundtrack of Netflix teen drama 13 Reasons Why in 2017.

At first, Schneider was unsure whether to let it be on the soundtrack, but his wife told him: “Just do it, put it in the show.”

The couple were away in France at the time. “We were gone for a few months, and when we came back my manager was like, ‘Something’s happening with this song’,” the singer recalls.

“I figured it’d be a quick spike and then fade away, but it’s had this weird and pretty unheard of long tail, where rather than falling off into nothing, it fell off and then slowly ramped back up. And it just seems to keep going.”

Schneider recorded a duet version with Phoebe Bridgers for another 13 Reasons Why scene in 2018. Most of its subsequent lease of life has come from its popularity on TikTok.

It has since defied musical gravity by becoming more popular every year. In 2024, it had almost a billion streams on Spotify – 57% more than the previous year, according to Chartmetric.

The song’s lyrics hark back to the start of a soured relationship: “I had all and then most of you / Some and now none of you / Take me back to the night we met.”

The song has been used in various TikTok memes, and Cosmopolitan put it top of its playlist of Sad Songs to Blast When You’re Feeling Hella Moody. But it can fit a range of emotions and situations – Molly-Mae Hague used it to soundtrack her pregnancy announcement video in 2022.

“I think everyone can relate to that sort of story and can insert their own biography into it,” Schneider reflects. “It’s a vessel that fits a lot of people’s personal stories. That’s maybe why it’s had such a lasting and slow-burning effect on people.”

The singer says The Night We Met’s success came at a good moment in the band’s career, “because we had already established ourselves in a lot of ways”.

“We already had a very devoted fanbase, so we weren’t necessarily locked into a one-hit-wonder status by that song.

“Even though it far outstrips our other songs in terms of streaming and everything, we have enough going on otherwise to not feel like we’re known only for that one singular moment, which is great.”

There is indeed a lot more to the band than one song.

Lord Huron began as a solo project in 2010, before Schneider assembled a full line-up.

They have released four albums of yearning, soulful and haunting Americana – with a fifth coming out on Friday.

Their albums show Schneider’s skill as a storyteller as well as a songwriter, often containing a running thread of a storyline.

The new LP is titled The Cosmic Selector Vol 1 – about a 1950s-style jukebox that can transport people to alternate universes, where life has turned out differently after small decisions in the past set them on different paths.

“I guess the past few years, as I’ve been getting a bit older, I’ve just been thinking about all the ways my own life could have gone, or could still go, or might have been,” Schneider explains.

“Not with any sense of regret, but more with a sense of wonder at the sheer randomness of it all, and how different things could have been if very little things had gone another way.

“So I started thinking about a collection of songs representing that randomness – the lottery that one’s lot in life is.”

But the controls of this magic jukebox are “busted”, he says.

“Everything’s mislabelled. What you think you’re selecting might send you a completely different way, and everything’s on the menu – sorrow, joy, horror, love – all the ways a life can go.”

So various characters, including one voiced by actress Kristen Stewart, are put through this dimension-hopping, life-scrambling retro randomiser. Some are based on Schneider himself, others are just made up, he says.

In reality, everyone has their own sliding doors moments when life could have turned out differently. Schneider looks back at the time a jazz combo played in an assembly at his grade school.

“I remember watching the bass player and being like, ‘I could be in a band some day’, and a lightbulb turned on in my head,” he says. “I think there’s a myriad of moments like that where I could have chosen one thing and didn’t, so it’s fascinating to consider that.”

The moment in France when his wife persuaded him to allow The Night We Met to be used in 13 Reasons Why could be seen as another turning point.

Schneider hit the jackpot in the lottery of life with that sleeper hit. He now hopes its popularity turns people on to the rest of their music.

“I want to keep trying to move forward and making new stuff,” he says. “And hopefully something that we make will have the same kind of impact that song has had.

“And I think over time, stuff we have already made will, I hope.”