The beauty of music is that it lives forever. While it’s cool to have discovered a song or artist before anyone else, the simple fact is that everyone will have a different introduction to something they enjoy listening to.

For many Arsenal fans, when it comes to the 2013 song Indecision by Mercury prize-winning south London-based artist Sampha, that moment may have come when Eberechi Eze’s transfer from Crystal Palace was made official last month.

In Eze’s announcement video posted on August 23, the club used an excerpt of the chorus where Sampha, who has collaborated with Beyonce, Drake and Kendrick Lamar, sings the line “let it all work out” over and over. Twenty minutes later, they blasted the same song around Emirates Stadium as the 27-year-old was presented on the pitch before their 5-0 win over Leeds United.

It was only ever Arsenal.

When Tottenham Hotspur, who also tried to sign Eze during the summer window, poked fun by announcing Xavi Simons with the caption “let it all work out” six days later – Simons himself also posted a video of himself holding up a Spurs shirt sound-tracked by Indecision on Instagram – Arsenal fans were quick to flood their rivals’ comment sections. But this was not about them.

For Eze, that song has followed him for a while. Arsenal released a video showing him muttering the words to himself just minutes before emerging from the Emirates tunnel in front of 60,000 people. A couple of months earlier, he had the song played at a restaurant with friends and family after winning the FA Cup with Crystal Palace.

Football media platform Versus has been uploading posts with a “let it all work out” tagline on TikTok for almost two years. Those posts have sometimes involved Eze, because of his footballing journey, but have not exclusively focused on him.

“Sampha’s song was remixed by Lil Wayne (titled Let It All Work Out and released in 2018) and that version was popping up in social spheres at the time,” Versus’ head of brand, Mayowa Quadri, says. “Our TikTok editor, Jay Smith, said this song has a deeper meaning, so he came up with the idea of showcasing people’s journeys to a point with ‘let it all work out’, to show that in the end, things happen how they should.”

At the time of writing, Versus’ Let It All Work Out playlist on TikTok has 57 posts. Ademola Lookman, Ousmane Dembele, Lucy Bronze and Alexander Sorloth are just some of the other players who have been featured. The song has also been used by countless video editors on TikTok to highlight a variety of players across different sports.

Versus’ post about Eze came before he won the FA Cup with Palace and the platform has an affinity with the player as they shot exclusive content when he first signed with kit manufacturer New Balance, and when he got his first signature boot.

Quadri says: “That moment after the FA Cup final sparked this even further to become ‘the Eze song’. Now we had the image of him winning a trophy, so Eze has gone from not being in professional football to that, and it went everywhere – so much so that Eze was aware of it.

“As a platform, we exist to showcase the future of football. Part of that is the convergence of football and music, football and fashion or football and culture. That moment is essentially what that is. You’ve almost sound-tracked someone’s career to a tee with a perfect song.

“I’m a fan of something moving away from online into real life. Jay’s brainchild has now become something that’s alive in embodiment of what a journey in football looks like when you go from struggle to success. So to see it come to life like that and be accepted and owned was surreal.”

A fair amount of consideration appears to have gone into Arsenal’s new signing announcements throughout the summer. Most have been themed around what that particular player would bring to the club. For example, part of the focus of Martin Zubimendi’s announcement video was control and rhythm, to demonstrate the qualities he would bring to Arsenal’s midfield.

His video also featured original music from north London-based musician Femi Koleoso, an Arsenal fan. Viktor Gyokeres’ announcement video featured another black British Arsenal-supporting musician, Kojey Radical. So the use of Sampha’s Indecision shouldn’t have come as a total shock and Quadri describes its use as “one of those open goals”.

“Because of his journey, his faith and what it means to him, it depicts his journey so well. Hence why, when he was announced for Arsenal, it didn’t surprise me that they saw the synergy and the momentum behind it, and thought it was the best way to announce him — especially by using Ian Wright too, with their synergies of being at Crystal Palace and going to Arsenal at the same age.”

That momentum undoubtedly filtered into the stadium once Eze walked out. Once back inside, still in disbelief, he told the Arsenal staff around him: “Do you know what that means? Bro, the energy! That’s more. It didn’t even feel like it was me.”

The intentions behind Arsenal’s announcement were clear and that came through in its execution. Their video received 26 million views on X and as a result of that popularity, the desire for more Let It All Work Out posts has only risen.

“I had messages when Spurs signed Simons asking us to change the song on our post to Indecision, and we had to explain that’s not how it works,” Quadri adds. “Not every player gets a Let It All Work Out. It’s for a very specific story. It’s great that Simons started at Barcelona, went to PSG and Leipzig, then ended up at Spurs but that’s not really the same.

“Spurs actually using (the term) confused me because I didn’t know whether they were trying to invoke emotion from Arsenal fans or if it was a genuine attempt at ‘it all worked out’. Because the rivalry is so rife between the two teams, what it came across as was: ‘You’re just trying to take the song from us’, which, as an innocent bystander watching, became more confusing. Everyone said: ‘It’s the Eze song’, but we were like: ‘It’s not the Eze song, but it also doesn’t fit this moment’.”

One of the sagas of the summer, Arsenal signing Eze was a moment to behold. Sampha’s song played a major role in making that moment as big as it was and plenty of fans will have struggled to get the song out of their heads as a result.

For Eze, it took 14 years for him to return to Arsenal after being released by the club in 2011. He plugged away, trialling at Fulham, Millwall, Queens Park Rangers, Crystal Palace and many other teams, but got his moment this summer. Sampha released Indecision 12 years ago and has won awards for albums Process and Lahai, but that song now carries extra significance.

“That’s the beautiful thing about music, especially in the social media era,” Quadri says. Running up That Hill by Kate Bush was released in 1985 but came back into the charts a couple of years ago because people heard it on Stranger Things. This is like football’s version of that, where some people have not heard a song that was released years ago.

“I was actually at a dinner with Foday Dumbuya from Labrum, who made the Pan-African kit for Arsenal last year, and Sampha was in attendance. I asked him if the streams of Indecision had gone up because we’re doing Let It All Work Out posts constantly and he laughed because he’d seen that the song’s been used in football discourse.

“That, like Eze’s journey, was a weird way of it all coming together and actually working out.”