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Kate Bush on Stranger Things chart boost: “It’s all really exciting!”
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 6 June 2022
Kate Bush has commented on the return of her 1985 song ‘Running Up That Hill’ to the charts. The track is currently sitting at number eight in the UK singles chart and may reach number one this week, thanks to its appearance in the new series of ‘Stranger Things’.
“You might’ve heard that the first part of the fantastic, gripping new series of ‘Stranger Things’ has recently been released on Netflix”, Bush wrote on her website. “It features the song ‘Running Up That Hill’, which is being given a whole new lease of life by the young fans who love the show – I love it too!”
“Because of this”, she adds, “‘Running Up That Hill’ is charting around the world and has entered the UK chart at number eight. It’s all really exciting! Thanks very much to everyone who has supported the song. I wait with bated breath for the rest of the series in July”.
Bush is not an artist who agrees to sync placements often, so it’s something of a coup for the show to have been given permission to use the song so heavily. Appearing throughout the latest series, it features most prominently in episode four, as it saves the character of Max from falling into the clutches of the show’s supernatural bad guy Vecna. From that point, Max listens to the song on repeat on her Walkman.
It took some time to find the right song to fill that important place in the show, music supervisor Nora Felder tells Yahoo. ”Each of the prospective song placements in the initial scripts was tagged with the placeholder, ‘TBD Max song’”, she says. “From there, I made an effort to internally align myself with what [show creators] the Duffers felt were the most important elements needed, and my own intuitive grasp of Max’s complex feelings”.
Of ‘Running Up That Hill’, she says: “It immediately struck me with its deep chords of the possible connection to Max’s emotional struggles and took on more significance as Bush’s song marinated in my conscious awareness”.
Aware that getting an OK from the Bush team might not be so easy, she then “sat with my clearance coordinator, and laid out all the scripted scenes for song uses that we knew of at that point. Knowing the challenges, we proceeded to create elaborate scene descriptions that provided as much context as possible so that Kate and her camp would have a full understanding of the uses. When we finished, we were on edge, but excited and hopeful”.
Bush, of course, agreed and the rest is history – or in the process of becoming so. In the Official Chart First Look yesterday, the Official Charts Company confirmed that ‘Running Up That Hill’ is currently on course to rise to number two in the UK singles chart. That alone would be higher than the number three position it reached on its original release 37 years ago. However, the OCC says, the song may as yet topple Harry Styles from his nine week stint at the top of the chart.
