Radiohead’s albums do well on the charts. Every album since 2000’s Kid A has peaked in at least the top three spots on the Billboard 200 chart, with two of them (Kid A and In Rainbows) going No. 1. They’ve never been a huge singles band, though. 1992’s “Creep” managed a peak at No. 34 in 1992, “High And Dry”/”Planet Telex” hit No. 78 in 1995, “Nude” reached No. 37 in 2008, and that’s it.
Well, that was it until this week. No, Radiohead hasn’t released any new music lately. It’s an older song that’s making waves: “Let Down,” a promotional single from OK Computer in 1997, appears on the latest Hot 100 chart for the first time this week, debuting at No. 92. It’s just the band’s fourth song to ever chart and their first in nearly two decades.
Billboard notes this was driven primarily from streaming activity, as it earned 5.2 million US streams during the tracking week.
The song landed a placement in the first-season finale of The Bear in 2022, but more recently, it has been garnering attention on TikTok. As Billboard explains, it was used in videos of melancholic moments beginning late last year and it has seen even more use in recent days.
On a related note, this follows Thom Yorke accidentally becoming a bit of a TikTok star earlier this year.
