When Matthew Wilder first wrote his early ’80s synth-pop smash “Break My Stride,” he wasn’t, as the lyrics suggest, in the greatest headspace. “I was under contract to Arista Records and I had been two years deep into that relationship and things were not going my way,” he tells the Recording Academy. “I was quite frustrated… And ‘Stride’ was a culmination of that feeling of being incredibly frustrated, and I’m hitting a wall, and the song poured out of me in probably a matter of 30 minutes.”
“Stride”—a jaunty tune about perseverance in the face of great odds—eventually went on to hit number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and has been remixed multiple times. And now, in 2020, it’s found new life on TikTok, where, in the #BreakMyStrideChallenge, users would text their friends the lyrics of the song, prompting Wilder to post an official lyric video featuring text messages of the song’s lyrics.