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TikTok’s Handshake Trend Is Reviving Songs You Forgot You Loved

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TikTok's Handshake Trend Is Reviving Songs You Forgot You Loved

There’s something kind of wild about watching a 2015 Jess Glynne track dominate 2025. Yet here we are: TikTok’s UK newsroom has crowned “Hold My Hand” the global Song of the Summer 2025, fuelled by over 4.5 million videos and 80 billion views.

Not a new release. Not a trending debut. A song that’s already had its radio moment, now living a second life through choreography and captions.

This isn’t nostalgia in the traditional sense. It’s not Gen Z ironically rediscovering their childhood playlists.

It’s something stranger and more interesting: a feedback loop where old songs become new currency, where 2010s dance-pop gets repurposed into the soundtrack for whatever micro-trend is currently eating the internet alive.

The TikTokHandshake Challenge That Changed Everything

@aryna.sabalenkaHad to recruit a fellow quarterfinalist for this trend♬ Illegal – PinkPantheress

The handshake trend itself deserves proper attention because it’s become the blueprint for how catalog music goes viral in 2025.

PinkPantheress‘s “Illegal” sparked a choreography challenge that’s deceptively simple: two people face each other, link hands palm-to-palm, cross-grip on the beat, rotate wrists, and repeat the sequence in sync with the track’s rhythm.

The whole thing takes maybe eight seconds but the timing has to be perfect or it falls apart.

What makes this particular challenge stick is the format. It requires a partner, which doubles the potential reach (both creators tag each other, both audiences see it).

The choreography is easy enough that anyone can learn it in a few attempts but just complex enough that getting it right feels like an achievement worth posting.

Search “handshake challenge tutorial” on TikTok or YouTube right now and you’ll find hundreds of breakdowns, each racking up millions of views from people trying to nail the sequence.

The numbers back this up. While exact video counts for the handshake challenge fluctuate daily, the #handshakechallenge hashtag has pulled in hundreds of millions of views across TikTok, with “Illegal” becoming the de facto soundtrack.

This isn’t just a UK phenomenon either. The challenge spread to the US, across Europe, into Southeast Asian markets. Same choreography, same eight-second clip, different languages in the captions.

When The Algorithm Prefers Old Music

Here’s where it gets interesting from a data perspective. According to Digital Music News, the average release year for TikTok’s 2025 Songs of the Summer list sits around 2011. That’s not a coincidence.

The platform’s recommendation algorithm seems to favour tracks from the 2010s dance-pop era, possibly because they’re structurally optimised for short-form video: big hooks that land in under 15 seconds, clear beat drops, emotional peaks that don’t require three minutes of buildup.

TikTok Music Revivals 2024-2025

Song Artist Original Release TikTok Trend Estimated Video Count
Hold My Hand Jess Glynne 2015 Summer anthem / celebration clips 4.5 million+
Illegal PinkPantheress 2023 Handshake challenge Millions (hashtag: 100M+ views)
Dior MK & Chrystal 2024 It-girl aesthetic / GRWM Hundreds of thousands
Various 2010s tracks Multiple 2010-2015 Nostalgic POV content Ongoing

The table above shows how different types of trends drive different levels of engagement. The handshake challenge creates millions of direct video recreations.

The “it-girl” aesthetic trend tied to “Dior” generates fewer direct recreations but more ambient usage across lifestyle content. Both work, just differently.

MK & Chrystal’s Luxury Soundtrack

“Dior” by MK & Chrystal follows a slightly different playbook. It’s not tied to a specific dance but to an aesthetic, specifically the “it-girl” persona that TikTok loves to package and repackage.

The track’s breezy house production and luxury-brand name-drop made it perfect for get-ready-with-me videos, morning routine clips, aspirational content that exists somewhere between genuine lifestyle documentation and self-aware performance.

What’s important here is that these revivals bypass traditional music industry gatekeepers entirely. Radio doesn’t have to pick it up first. Streaming editorial playlists don’t need to feature it.

A song just starts appearing in enough TikToks, and the charts respond. “Hold My Hand” didn’t need a reissue campaign or a sync placement in a major film. It needed 4.5 million creators to decide it was the right soundtrack for their summer content.

Why 2010s Dance-Pop Keeps Winning On TikTok

The structural advantages of 2010s dance-pop for TikTok are worth breaking down properly. These tracks were designed for radio play in an era when radio still mattered, which means they follow specific formulas: verse into pre-chorus into massive chorus, usually within 45 seconds.

That structure translates perfectly to TikTok’s format, where you need an emotional or sonic payoff fast.

“Hold My Hand” is a textbook example. The chorus hits at 28 seconds into the original track, but most TikToks clip straight to that moment.

You get the full emotional impact without needing to sit through any buildup. Gen Z might have been too young to remember these tracks dominating Radio 1 in 2015, but they grew up adjacent to them.

This isn’t discovery so much as rediscovery, or maybe just a first-time conscious encounter with something that’s always been playing in supermarkets and shopping centres.

The familiarity works in the songs’ favour. There’s a reason why completely unknown tracks rarely break through on TikTok compared to catalog revivals.

Users are more likely to engage with audio they half-recognise, where the chorus feels like it’s been living in their subconscious for years.

The Spotify Playlist Response

Inevitably, streaming platforms have caught on. Search for “TikTok viral UK 2025” or “songs trending on TikTok” on Spotify and you’ll find dozens of playlists attempting to capture this moment.

Some update daily, others are just static collections of whatever was viral three months ago. Apple Music has similar offerings, often with better curation but less frequent updates.

These playlists serve a purpose if you’re trying to keep up with what’s happening, but they also flatten the experience.

TikTok’s power comes from context: the specific video, the specific joke, the specific emotional register a song is soundtracking.

Strip that away and you’re left with a playlist of songs that may or may not make sense next to each other.

Still, the streaming numbers don’t lie. Tracks that go viral on TikTok see immediate uplift in Spotify streams, sometimes jumping from a few thousand daily plays to millions within a week.

What This Means For New Music

The elephant in the room is what happens to new artists when the algorithm keeps pushing listeners back towards 2015.

If the average TikTok viral hit is from 2011, and the Song of the Summer 2025 is from 2015, where does that leave someone releasing their debut single in 2025?

The answer is complicated. Some new artists are finding ways to game the system by deliberately making music that sounds like it could be from 2013, banking on that sonic familiarity to trigger the algorithm.

Others are leaning into trends early, hoping to be the soundtrack for whatever challenge is about to explode.

PinkPantheress herself is a relatively new artist (her debut mixtape dropped in 2021), but “Illegal” benefits from nostalgic production that could easily pass for a lost Rihanna B-side from 2011.

Labels are paying attention too. Catalog departments are reportedly combing through back catalogs looking for potential TikTok moments, sometimes even seeding trends by paying TikTok creators to use specific tracks.

It’s impossible to manufacture virality reliably, but you can create conditions where it’s more likely to happen.

How To Join The Handshake Challenge (If You’re That Way Inclined)

For creators and music fans wanting to participate, here’s the basic breakdown:

  1. Find a partner: The trend requires two people, ideally with similar timing.
  2. Learn the sequence: Palm-to-palm grip, cross-hand rotation on the beat, repeat. Watch a few tutorials to get the rhythm down.
  3. Use “Illegal” by PinkPantheress: The original audio is key. Using a remix or cover won’t get picked up by the algorithm the same way.
  4. Film in good lighting: This is a hand-focused trend, so you need clear visibility of the choreography.
  5. Tag appropriately: #handshakechallenge, #illegal, #pinkpantheress, plus any relevant regional tags.

Will this trend still be relevant in six months? Who knows. But that’s the nature of TikTok virality. Something else will replace it, another song will get its moment, and the cycle continues.

What Comes Next

The bigger question is sustainability. Can songs keep getting revived indefinitely, or will the well run dry once Gen Z has cycled through every 2010s banger that fits TikTok’s sonic profile?

And what happens when the platform’s user base starts ageing up, when the people making content in 2025 were actually old enough to remember “Hold My Hand” the first time around?

There’s no clean answer yet. For now, we’re in a strange middle ground where chart success can come from unexpected places, where a song from 2015 can dominate summer 2025, where the handshake challenge can turn a PinkPantheress track into a global phenomenon.

It’s chaotic, sure. But it’s also opened up possibilities that didn’t exist before. Songs aren’t dead after their initial release cycle. They’re just waiting for the right TikTok trend to bring them back.

Five Catalog Tracks To Watch For Potential TikTok Revival:

  • Clean Bandit feat. Jess Glynne, “Rather Be” (2014): Similar sonic profile to “Hold My Hand”, strong nostalgic pull for Gen Z.
  • Icona Pop, “I Love It” (2012): Already had minor TikTok moments, due for a full revival.
  • Disclosure feat. Sam Smith, “Latch” (2012): Perfect for emotional POV content.
  • Avicii, “Wake Me Up” (2013): Festival nostalgia meets current folk-pop trends.
  • Charli XCX, “Boom Clap” (2014): Currently riding broader Charli revival wave post-Brat.

The cycle keeps turning. Next summer’s soundtrack might be sitting in someone’s 2014 playlist right now, just waiting for the right challenge to bring it back.

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