Last year, during the height of the protests against the Iranian government, the same song could be heard in the background of hundreds of TikTok videos, particularly ones of women cutting their hair in solidarity with the women of Iran, following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. Now, the song can be heard in the background of videos of American high school students protesting ongoing gun violence in US schools. But what is this song, and how did it become the soundtrack to protests around the globe?

The song, “Another Love,” was released as a single in 2012 by English singer-songwriter Tom Odell, from his debut EP, Songs from Another Love. At the time it did moderately well, charting at number one in Belgium and number 10 in Odell’s native UK. But it didn’t resonate globally until a decade later, in June 2022.  

On June 17, a user named Emma, whose TikTok account is dedicated to Odell, posted a video from his European tour. In the video, Odell can be seen playing a piano on stage as the audience sings “Another Love” with him, starting with these lyrics:

And if somebody hurts you, I wanna fight
But my hand's been broken one too many times
So I'll use my voice, I'll be so fucking rude
Words, they always win, but I know I'll lose

The crowd continues singing, often overpowering Odell:

And I'd sing a song that'd be just ours
But I sang ’em all to another heart
And I wanna cry, I wanna learn to love
But all my tears have been used up

On another love, another love
All my tears have been used up
On another love, another love

Emma’s attention to the song prompted its surge in popularity on TikTok. In August 2022, Odell posted a video with “Another Love” lyrics being sung in the background, announcing the song had reached 1 billion Spotify streams. Months later, “Another Love” made its way into the top ten of year-end music charts in Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. At the time of writing in April 2023, the song has over 1.5 billion streams, and its music video has almost 650 million views on YouTube.

The earliest video I could find connecting the song to the Iran protests was one from a prominent Persian TikToker, Nika Azari, posted on September 19 with the caption, “Iranian people are cutting their hair short to protest the killing of a 22-year-old girl Mahsa Amini by the police in Iran bc of hijab.” The video has since been viewed over 8 million times and has received over 1 million likes—and from then on, the song essentially became the theme song of the 2022 Iran protests on Tiktok. Another video by Nika using the same song went viral just a few days later: in it, she gets dressed with a caption that reads, “GRWM to get killed in Iran.” GRWM, or get ready with me, videos are a popular genre of video found on both YouTube and TikTok in which users talk to the camera while getting ready for their day.

Countless young women around the world posted TikTok videos cutting their hair in solidarity with the women of Iran in September and October 2022, silent except for the sound of the concert audience singing the words to “Another Love,” which had taken on new meaning as a result of the association. “If somebody hurts you, I wanna fight” was no longer about a doomed relationship, but about an oppressive government. While the most popular video using the song is an “escape room fail” from earlier in September, the second most popular is a protest video posted in early October which has garnered over 44 million views and 4.8 million likes.

Following the song’s newfound fame as a protest song, Odell spoke out in support of protestors in Iran, saying, “I’m shocked by the events taking place in Iran. I’m sending love and thoughts to those incredibly brave people standing up for human rights and standing up for women. Everyone should have the choice to wear, or not wear, whatever they choose.” On September 26, at a show in Germany, he dedicated “Another Love” to “the brave people protesting in Iran,” continuing, “We might be far from Iran here in Hannover Germany, but I think and hope that I speak for everyone in this room that we stand together with everyone protesting for human rights and women’s rights.” On September 28, he posted a TikTok of a crowd of fans singing “Another Love” in which he isn’t visible, with the caption “alone, we are strong. together, we are stronger.”

While the original version of Odell’s song has been used in over 650,000 TikTok videos, the live version has been used in over 85,000 and is undoubtedly the one associated with protest movements around the world. The protest videos are hard to ignore, with women looking directly at the camera, stone-faced, as they cut their hair off.

The song has become so linked with protests for a number of TikTok users that it is now used in videos of other protests, most recently in videos of young Americans protesting continued gun violence in high schools around the country. Using the audio, one mother posted a video that said, “Watching these babies fight for their rights is both heartbreaking and the absolute most inspiring thing I’ve seen in this lifetime. They are the hope we need.” While she was referring to protests against gun violence in particular, she could be referring to any number of youth-driven protest movements around the world and the sentiment would still apply. 

While protest songs are by no means a new phenomenon, “Another Love” feels like an outlier due to the nature of the song’s lyrics; it is, after all, a love song, not an overtly political song. The fact that it’s been adopted as such by TikTok users, placing the song in a new context, giving the lyrics new meaning, and connecting various protest movements around the world, serves as a fascinating case study of the changing nature of protest songs in the age of social media.