A brief moment of pure bliss featuring Jon Hamm dancing in a nightclub has accomplished what multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns often fail to do: resurrect a 15-year-old dance track and turn it into a viral streaming phenomenon.
Originally released in 2010 by Danish DJ and producer Kato, alongside singer-songwriter Jon Nørgaard, “Turn The Lights Off” has surged to the top of Spotify’s Viral 50 chart. The track is now pulling in approximately 140,000 daily streams and has surpassed 35 million total plays, an astonishing comeback for a song long removed from mainstream rotation.
“This whole thing is so surreal,” Kato shared, reacting to the unexpected revival.
How a Jon Hamm Meme Sparked a Global Streaming Surge
The song’s resurgence can be traced directly to TikTok, where users have embraced a viral meme format built around a clip from Hamm’s Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors. In the now-ubiquitous video, Hamm sways under cool blue nightclub lighting, eyes closed, completely absorbed in the music as “Turn The Lights Off” drops its euphoric house groove.
The formula is simple and endlessly adaptable:
Users caption a tiny personal win, then smash-cut to Hamm vibing like nothing else in the world matters.
Extra McNugget in the bag? Jon Hamm dance.
USB plugs in correctly on the first try? Jon Hamm dance.
Finally found the matching Tupperware lid? Jon Hamm dance.
From Micro-Wins to Millennial Nostalgia
Beyond humor, the meme has evolved into something more reflective. Across TikTok, Instagram Reels, and X, users have repurposed the clip to express nostalgia for simpler times—when staying out late didn’t come with consequences and dance music felt like an escape rather than a backdrop.
Once again, TikTok has proven its unmatched ability to revive forgotten tracks, transforming overlooked dance records into chart-dominating hits for reasons entirely unrelated to their original release cycles.
TikTok’s Cultural Power Strikes Again
From Fleetwood Mac to Kate Bush, and now Kato, the platform continues to redefine how music history is rewritten in real time. In the age of memes, it takes just one perfectly timed clip—and one perfectly vibing Jon Hamm—to remind the world that dance music never really disappears. It just waits for the right moment to come back.