TikTok star goes viral after sharing dad’s 43-year-old unreleased song ‘Surrender to Me’

‘I woke up to texts from people I never get texts from,’ Zach Montana said

(@zach.montana/tiktok)

A TikTok user has revealed how he made his father’s 43-year-old unreleased song go viral.

19-year-old Zach Montana first heard the song titled “Surrender to Me”, which was written by his dad William “Curly” Smith, playing on an old truck last month.

After deeming the funk-R&B track to be catchy, he uploaded a video of himself listening to it to the platform.

“There’s a horn section! Just wait… It’s so good!” Montana could be heard saying in the video. “He never released it! I’m so mad at him.”

The video amassed thousands of plays overnight, with Montana telling The Guardian that he “woke up to texts from people I never get texts from — like my hairstylist — saying, ‘Yo, this is crazy!’”

The track has now been played more than 3 million times and noticed by musicians such as Meghan Trainor and Herman Li. US music critic Anthony Fantano called “Surrender to Me” a “banger”.

It has also been officially released on streaming platforms under the artist name FireCityFunk.

Montana’s father told The Guardian that the track had been sitting on the shelf for 43 years, saying: “He just discovered it in the car, did a TikTok thing on it, and the rest is history”.

William has previously toured with artists like Boston, Jo Jo Gunne, Steve Ray Vaughan, Belinda Carlisle, and Willie Nelson.