Did Kate Bush make a “deal with God?” Well, she obviously made a deal with the TV gods, The Duffer Brothers. Thanks to them heavily featuring Bush’s 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” in Stranger Things 4, the song has broken several records and has become an even more massive hit than it was when it was first released. Its latest accomplishment is that it has run past 100 million views on YouTube. The song was first released on the site in January of 2011, but since the release of Stranger Things 4, views have more than doubled. It still trails behind views of young phenomenons like BTS, but for a 30+-year-old video, that’s still mighty impressive.
On the show, Sadie Sink’s character, Max Mayfield, and her friends used this song as her “anchor” to avoid becoming a victim of the villain Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). As a result, “Running Up That Hill” was heard several times throughout the nine episodes, and a dramatic slowed-down remix was even used to score one important scene.
“Running Up That Hill” was originally entitled “A Deal With God” until Bush’s record label decided that including the word “God” in a rock song title was probably a bad idea in 1985. Ultimately, the song was officially released as “Running Up That Hill (Deal With God).” It was the lead single from Bush’s album Hounds of Love.
In the United States, the song was Bush’s first and only Billboard hit but only managed to run to #30. It was a much bigger hit in Bush’s native UK, landing at #3.
Thanks to Stranger Things, “Running Up That Hill” recently hit #1 in the UK, making it the song that took the longest to do so — 37 years — and also marks the longest gap between #1s for a single artist. Her song “Wuthering Heights” hit #1 44 years ago! Bush is now the oldest woman to ever land a #1 in the UK. It also hit #1 in eight other countries.
In the US, “Running Up That Hill” hit #1 on iTunes and Spotify and is currently #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, making this her only Top Ten hit in this country. It reached #1 on the US Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, and Hounds of Love just landed at #1 on the Billboard Catalog Albums chart.
Last month, in an interview with BBC Radio 4, Bush expressed:
“[‘Stranger Things’] is such a great series, I thought that the track would get some attention. But I just never imagined that it would be anything like this. It’s so exciting. But it’s quite shocking really, isn’t it? I mean, the whole world’s gone mad.”
Bush’s ethereal alt-pop classic isn’t the only song getting a revival thanks to Stranger Things. Thanks to an iconic musical sequence showcasing this season’s breakout, Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” from the 1986 album of the same name, has also hit #1 on iTunes, fueled partly by Metalica themselves posting a Tik Tok video of them wearing “Hellfire Club” (Eddie’s Dungeons & Dragons group) tee shirts and playing the song. The video was captioned “Heard any cool songs lately?” This clip has notched over 42M views.
This marks the first time Metallica has scored a chart hit in the UK.
On their social media, Metallica posted:
“The way The Duffer Brothers have incorporated music into Stranger Things has always been next level, so we were beyond psyched for them to not only include Master of Puppets in the show, but to have such a pivotal scene built around it. We were all stoked to see the final result and when we did we were totally blown away.”
Metallica was actually part of the Stranger Things process. Guitarist Kirk Hammett, bassist Robert Trujillo, and Trujillo’s son Tye recorded new instrumental portions for the sequence.
Which retro hit would you rather jam out to? Are there any more songs from Stranger Things that you think deserve a resurgence?
