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The final song on LA band Lord Huron’s second album flew well under the mainstream radar when it was released in 2015. A decade on, it’s one of the most unlikely success stories in music. Beyoncé and Dua Lipa may be two of the world’s top pop stars, and both put out new albums last year, but their biggest songs of 2024 did not match the popularity of a 10-year-old track by Lord Huron, according to the official Billboard global end-of-year singles chart.

The Night We Met was 35th on Billboard’s global chart for 2024, above Dua’s Houdini at 37 and Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em at 41; and it was 60th on the UK Official Chart Company’s end-of-year rundown, while Charli’s Guess was her biggest hit single at 73. The Lord Huron song is in the exclusive club of tracks that have racked up three billion Spotify plays – a club even Taylor Swift isn’t in yet.

Videos featuring The Night We Met have had another three billion views on TikTok, according to music data tracker Chartmetric. The song’s success came at a good moment in the band’s career, “because we had already established ourselves in a lot of ways”. Lord Huron began as a solo project in 2010, before Schneider assembled a full line-up. They have released four albums of yearning, soulful and haunting Americana – with a fifth coming out on Friday.

Their albums show Schneider’s skill as a storyteller as well as a songwriter, often containing a running thread of a storyline. The new LP is titled The Cosmic Selector Vol 1 – about a 1950s-style jukebox that can transport people to alternate universes, where life has turned out differently after small decisions in the past set them on different paths. The controls of this magic jukebox are “busted”, he says. “Everything’s mislabelled. What you think you’re selecting might send you a completely different way, and everything’s on the menu – sorrow, joy, horror, love – all the ways a life can go.”

Various characters, including one voiced by actress Kristen Stewart, are put through this dimension-hopping, life-scrambling retro randomiser. Some are based on Schneider himself, others are just made up, he says. In reality, everyone has their own sliding doors moments when life could have turned out differently. Schneider looks back at the time a jazz combo played in an assembly at his grade school. “I remember watching the bass player and being like, ‘I could be in a band some day’, and a lightbulb turned on in my head,” he says.

The moment in France when his wife persuaded him to allow The Night We Met to be used in 13 Reasons Why could be seen as another turning point. Schneider hit the jackpot in the lottery of life with that sleeper hit. He now hopes its popularity turns people on to the rest of their music. “I want to keep trying to move forward and making new stuff,” he says. “And hopefully something that we make will have the same kind of impact that song has had. And I think over time, stuff we have already made will, I hope.”

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