On TikTok, few things are more fun than a reaction video.
Over the past several weeks, EDM star Kato’s song “Turn the Lights Off,” featuring Jon Nørgaard, has gone viral on TikTok and Reels thanks to a trend built around a Jon Hamm-in-the-club scene. The resurgence has been so strong that the track entered the Canadian Hot 100 and topped Spotify’s Viral chart — 15 years after its initial release.
Kato says that “never in a million years” did he see his song coming back like this.
“This is so random. I never thought it could be possible to get a worldwide hit with a song we released 15 years ago,” Kato tells Rolling Stone. “But hey, I love it! I feel humbled by everything happening, and thankful that something we created 15 years ago can have a positive impact on people today.”
The TikTok trend sees users posting a phrase like, “When you’re petting a dog and someone says, ‘Wow, he usually doesn’t like anyone,’” or “When she reaches over to scratch the back of your head” with a video of themselves, before cutting to a close-up clip of Jon Hamm blissfully dancing in a club from the Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors.
“I’m still in some kind of shock. What’s happening right now is beyond imagination,” Kato adds. “It still feels like it’s a dream. Social media can really change people’s lives overnight. I’m overwhelmed by all the attention and new possibilities.”
One sound with the song has been used more than 40,000 times on the platform, with some videos reaching more than one million likes. Brett Gelman teased fans of Stranger Things by recreating the meme with the caption, “Me cause I know how it ends and you don’t.”
Kato says he found out about the trend after being tagged in some videos from Ukrainian and Russian profiles on Instagram, but he didn’t understand what the posts meant. He says he refrained from sharing the videos outside of fear that they were some sort of posts related to the country’s war. “I just watched this thing grow, and I was so happy to realize that the trend had a positive message, and to see it spread to the whole world,” he says.
Along with the Spotify Viral chart, the song also reached No. 74 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 for this week.
Kato himself recreated the meme trend, reacting to the news of the song topping the Spotify chart. “When you realize that the song you made 15 years ago…” he captioned the post. “Is the No. 1 viral song in the world!”
Kato says he’s a big fan of Jon Hamm — especially his role in Mad Men — and would “love to meet him someday.” He adds, “It´s an honor that my music ended up being a part of this trend, with a true legend and the positive reactions it has created so far.”
Kato now plans to continue touring the world, and “give something back” to all the people responsible for the song’s revival.
