The imminent success of the fourth season of Stranger Things has had a special weight on a certain “lifesaver” song of the series, Running Up That Hill, by Kate Bush, which has been number 1 on iTunes downloads for weeks and is among the 100 most listened songs on Spotify.
The song was recorded by the English singer 37 years ago for her fifth album, Hounds of Love, and despite being one of the most famous tracks of her career, Running Up That Hill never reached number 1 until today. At the time it was ranked third on the UK’s most played singles chart, and was positioned at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.
From the beginning of her career, Kate Bush was an artist who renounced easy fame as she is an artist who has prioritized her personal life and her work in music in pursuit of an authentic art that seeks enjoyment rather than profit. This led many to consider her a perfectionist artist with a certain “magical aura” that led her to record only one album per decade and to dispense with promotional tours.
Despite this, Kate Bush was the first singer-songwriter to reach the top of the Billboard charts (this time with her song Wunthering Heights) and was also the first woman to top the charts in her country. Although, it is also worth noting that Wunthering Heights was the only time she reached number 1, until today. However, many hit songs and popular knowledge are kept in people’s memory under the authorship of Kate Bush, some of them are Babooshka, Don’t Give Up (which she made in collaboration with Peter Gabriel) and, of course, Running Up That Hill.
The song, which already has more than 65 million plays on youtube has also become a trend on social networks, and is that both on Instagram and TikTok, the song has become a trend and is part of many, many types of videos, talking about the series or relating the lyrics of the song with their personal realities.
Its resurgence, as of today thanks to Stranger Things, is such that Billboard projections claim that it will soon unseat Harry Styles, who has been reigning at the top of the music charts for ten weeks.
