Lets Groove Tonight Dance Previous Owners Trend

2021viral videodead

Published September 24, 2026

The Let's Groove Tonight Dance is an August 2021 TikTok trend where users spin and swing their arms in circles to Earth, Wind & Fire's 1981 song. It later spawned the Previous Owners Trend, where dancers list their dating and sexual history as a used-car spec sheet.

Overview

The Let's Groove Tonight Dance, also called the Let's Groove Tonight Challenge, is a TikTok dance trend built around Earth, Wind & Fire's 1981 track "Let's Groove"1. The move itself is loose and exaggerated, with dancers spinning in tight circles while swinging their arms in the same circular motion and shaking their hips in time with the funk bassline3.

Loading tweet...

The dance took off in early August 2021 and hit peak virality by the middle of the month, with a handful of clips racking up tens of millions of views inside a week3. It also spun off a second, weirder trend a few days later, the Previous Owners Trend, where TikTokers dance to the same song while a text overlay lists their dating and sexual history in the format of a used-car listing2.

Origin & Background

Platform
TikTok
Creator
@nickanthonyy
Date
2021

The dance started on August 7th, 2021, when TikToker @nickanthonyy posted a clip of himself dancing to the chorus of "Let's Groove" with big spinning arm movements and a lot of hip shaking. The video pulled in more than 2.7 million views in the two weeks that followed3.

Within days other creators were copying the choreography and pushing it further. On August 10th, TikToker @esmeralda677 posted a duet version with another dancer that hit more than 15 million views in ten days3.

How It Spread

The dance went genuinely huge across TikTok through mid-August 2021. On August 14th, @menanados posted a version that racked up more than 27 million views in six days, and on August 17th YouTuber Liza Koshy posted her own take that pulled in more than 16.5 million views in three days3.

The Previous Owners spin-off began around August 22nd. On August 18th, TikToker @owens414 had uploaded a video using an original sound that looped the same section of "Let's Groove", and a few days later creators started using both that sound and the official track to perform the dance over a text overlay styled like a car spec sheet3. An early example came from @kendallaalfordd on August 22nd, and it was quickly followed by @sofe_doe on August 23rd (over 2.3 million views in two days) and @beef_stroganoff on August 24th (over 2.4 million views in a day)3. The overlay typically lists "previous owners" for the number of exes, "miles" for sexual encounters, "year" for birth year, "make & model" for body type or personality, "stickers" for tattoos and "condition" as a rating like excellent, reliable or used3.

The format drew backlash almost as fast as it spread. On August 23rd, Twitter user @bfromthesea shared one of the videos with the caption "What type of trend is this", pulling in more than 800 retweets and 480 likes in two days4. The next day, Twitter user @MiaWallace_ posted a Spanish-language tweet arguing that young women were marketing themselves like objects (translated from Spanish), which picked up more than 400 likes in a day5.

How to Use This Meme

For the basic dance, dancers typically stand in place and swing both arms in wide circular motions while spinning in rhythm and shaking their hips to the "Let's Groove" chorus3. For the Previous Owners version, creators usually do the same dance while a text overlay is styled like a used-car spec sheet, commonly including fields for previous owners, miles, year, make & model, stickers and condition3.

Frequently Asked Questions