TikTok virality gives Jeff Buckley his first US Top 100 hit 29 years after his death | Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley has achieved his first US Hot 100 hit single, 29 years after his death, with Lover, You Should Have Come Over at No 97 this week.
TikTok virality is behind the success, as a new generation of listeners discover Buckley’s spirited, romantic songwriting and pair it with videos on the social media platform. TikTok videos don’t count towards US chart positions, but viral trends drive listeners towards songs on streaming services that do count.
Lover, You Should Have Come Over is an acoustic ballad in which Buckley laments a broken relationship and longs for the lover of the title to return and forgive him. “All my blood for the sweetness of her laughter … she’s the tear that hangs inside my soul for ever,” runs one particularly heartfelt section.
The track features on Grace, Buckley’s sole studio album, released in 1994. The album only reached No 82 in the US but was a touchstone for college students and hopeless romantics, eventually becoming a platinum seller.
Tragically, Buckley never followed it up. He died in 1997, accidentally drowning while swimming in the Mississippi River. Sketches for songs he had been working on for a second album were released the following year as the compilation Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk. In 2016, another compilation of unheard material was released: You and I, chiefly containing cover versions he’d recorded in 1993, including songs by Bob Dylan, the Smiths and Led Zeppelin.
Buckley is not the only 90s-alternative name to belatedly get a chart hit thanks to TikTok: Radiohead’s song Let Down, from 1997’s OK Computer, charted for the first time in 2025.
In December, TikTok’s Year in Music report claimed that eight of the 10 US No 1 singles of 2025 “had a viral moment on TikTok first”, and that all of the year’s 13 UK No 1 singles went viral on the platform at some point.
