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Chrystal’s “The Days”: Ten Years in the Vault, Then Suddenly Everywhere

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Chrystal's "The Days": Ten Years in the Vault, Then Suddenly Everywhere

Ten years. That’s how long Bolton producer Chrystal sat on “The Days” before it saw proper daylight.

The track finally dropped October 1, 2024, but its roots go back to 2015. Chrystal made the beat thinking about club floors and festival crowds, she was either at raves or performing at them with her sister back then, watching which bits made people lose it. 

Over the years, the production kept shifting. House to garage to R&B to alternative pop. She couldn’t land on what it wanted to be.

Then in 2019, she left a record deal and the whole thing got shelved. Just sitting there on a hard drive somewhere with about 40 other tracks she’d made. 

You ever spend years making music only to have basically nothing online to show for it? That was Chrystal’s reality.

But her family wouldn’t let it go. Kept asking when she’d upload the stuff. Her friends too. Eventually she just said f*ck it and put everything up.

When TikTok Found It

Her daughter started using “The Days” on TikTok. And something weird happened – it took off in Northern England specifically. One of the early viral posts was someone on a bus with a green screen, recreating school day memories. That nostalgia angle cut through the noise.

Views went from a few thousand to millions. Chrystal’s sister kept her updated on the numbers, then her daughter told her it was spreading on Snapchat too, which fed back into TikTok. 

Classic viral loop stuff we’ve seen before, but this felt hyperlocal at first—just Northern kids vibing to it.

Then it became Chrystal’s first UK Top 40 entry. That got her signed to Polydor’s Chaos imprint. Through Christmas 2024, the song kept climbing. Top 10. Then Top 5. Peaked at Number 4.

But here’s the mad bit: it went number one in Latvia and New Zealand, and hit top five in Australia, Ireland, and Lithuania. A decade-old track from Bolton suddenly charting globally.

The Remix That Sent It Stratospheric

Bristol producer Notion put out a remix November 8, 2024. DJs Zulan and Sammy Virji started dropping it in sets. 

Those clips alone did millions of views. The label went hard on a remix strategy, putting one out every week, getting ten different versions made. Smart.

Current numbers: 750 million streams, over 5.6 million video creations, 5.2 billion total views. That’s not just viral, that’s a proper cultural moment.

Where It Came From

Chrystal’s influences make sense when you hear the track. She grew up on Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Aaliyah -all that 90s and 00s R&B production. Plus UK garage, bassline, and Bolton’s bounce scene. 

She mentions CDs of live sets from Wigan Pier, Cricketers, Maximes getting passed around. That’s proper Northern rave culture right there.

She rates Max Martin as one of her favourite producers ever. And when Disclosure dropped “White Noise,” she said it felt completely fresh, like nothing she’d heard before. You can hear that Disclosure influence in “The Days,” that garage-y shuffle with modern pop sensibility.

What It Means

Chrystal said releasing all those archived tracks felt freeing. She’d been making music her main focus for over a decade but had barely anything to show online. 

That’s brutal. Imagine the imposter syndrome, wondering if you’ve wasted all that time.

Then your daughter uses one of your old tracks on TikTok and suddenly the world cares.

Official Charts called “The Days” one of the UK’s biggest songs of early 2025. She’s now working on new material and building out a live set. After a decade of silence, Chrystal’s got momentum.

And yeah, everyone loves calling these things “overnight success stories.” But ten years sitting on unreleased music, then your family finally convincing you to just put it out there? That’s not overnight. That’s perseverance dressed up as luck.

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