"Let Me Be" debuted at No. 1 on the SIQA Global Top 100 AI Songs chart this year, pulling more than 13 million YouTube views and landing in over 50,000 TikTok videos. Nobody fully agrees on who made it. Warner's Spinnin' Records, according to Music Ally, the viral song credits Zambian artist Mwape Chishinka. Rwandan artist Elvin Cena has told OkayAfrica it's his song, written on an old laptop and finished with AI-assisted production. Either way, the track exploded before either name meant anything to anyone. That's what viral songs look like now. Some of the biggest tracks skip discovery entirely and get built for the feed from the start.
We track this closely while working on the collections for Feed Clips, because chasing individual trends and licensing one-off viral songs is probably the wrong instinct for product teams. A song can be released with one intention and years later become the soundtrack for a dance challenge, a morning routine, a comeback edit, or a family memory. By the time you spot the trend, work through music licensing, and get the song into your product, culture has usually moved on. Seven tracks are doing exactly this right now, and representing three patterns worth understanding if you're building a social or UGC app.
Songs catching on thanks to hooks that play well with short-form video
Guru Randhawa’s “Dopamine” dropped in January and already has a dedicated hook-step dance challenge with more than 1.5 million TikTok posts under the tag. Its upbeat Punjabi-pop sound and repeatable choreography made it a natural fit for dance content. King’s “OOPS,” originally released in August 2022, is finding a second life through fashion content and transition edits, where its quick beat switch gives creators a natural place to reveal a new look or land a visual cut.
The songs may have come out years apart, but they are catching on for the same reason: each has a specific musical moment that creators can immediately connect to a visual idea. “Dopamine” gives them a dance to repeat, while “OOPS” gives them a beat to build transitions around.
When a song's original context becomes someone else's raw material
Zach Bryan’s “American Nights” is gaining momentum alongside his With Heaven on Tour, with creators using its nostalgic energy for road trips and summer memories. Nearly a decade after reaching No. 6 on the Hot 100, Kodak Black’s “Tunnel Vision” has become a soundtrack for comeback edits and pregame hype videos.
Paramore’s “Ain’t It Fun” is being rediscovered as an adulting anthem, which makes complete sense to me. Millennials experienced young adulthood alongside Paramore, and now the song is soundtracking videos about work, moving out, and financial stress as that generation enters its mid-30s and early 40s. Like Madonna, Blondie, and No Doubt, Paramore’s catalog is aging alongside its audience.
The Young Rascals’ “A Beautiful Morning” tells a different story. Nearly 60 years after its release, a generation of creators who were not alive when the song was recorded is using it in scenic footage and wholesome morning-routine videos. When it first became a hit, there was no concept of a song “going viral” or finding a second life through short-form video. Yet the right feeling has carried it across decades and into an entirely new creative context.
That is what makes the Feed Clips catalog so expansive. It includes emerging, feed-native songs alongside the tracks users grew up with and classics they may be discovering for the first time. Whether a song was released last month or nearly six decades ago, the right track can still find its moment, its audience, and an entirely new meaning.
The feed is originating its own hits
"Let Me Be" is the clearest example. There's no tour behind it, no discography, and the identity attached to it is still disputed. It was built directly for the feed, from a laptop in either Zambia or Rwanda depending on which account you believe, and it topped a chart before most listeners had heard either name. That is a different kind of virality than an older song finding new life, and another reason why predicting the next viral track is nearly impossible.
Music licensing shouldn't wait for a viral song to take off
If trending songs already exist in a pre-cleared catalog, platforms don't have to chase down music licensing after a song already goes viral. They can build a broader music integration strategy already prepared for dance, fashion, nostalgia, country, and lifestyle content, whatever creators decide next. That's the difference between reactive licensing and being ready for viral songs before they happen.
All seven songs in this piece are already cleared and sitting inside the Feed Clips catalog:
- Guru Randhawa's "Dopamine" and King's "Oops" for dance and transition content
- Zach Bryan's "American Nights" for road-trip and summer-memory clips
- Kodak Black's "Tunnel Vision" for comeback and motivational edits
- Paramore's "Ain't It Fun" for adulting and life-stage content
- The Young Rascals' "A Beautiful Morning" for lifestyle and scenic footage
- The Second Voice's "Let Me Be" for emotional and reflective content
If you want to see what else is in there, preview the Feed Clips collections or book time to talk through how it amps up your platform.
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