How ‘Stranger Things’ Made a Retro Hit Cool Again

Since the debut of Stranger Things (Season 4), Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) is back on the charts once again, since 1985. The song jumped 270% in global search interest on Google Trends the day the show was released and has remained one of the most-played songs across the different music-related platforms over the past few weeks.

It first peaked on YouTube, where the largest search volume still comes from today, followed by Spotify and Apple Music. The song has also been used in 1.2 million videos on TikTok and the hashtag #runningupthathill currently has 513.1 million views.

Unsurprisingly, most of the TikTok videos are edits of that famous scene where Sadie Sink’s character Max lifts off the ground with her headphones on and other Stranger Things-related content. The comments left on the song’s music video on Youtube also made multiple references to the show.

Running Up That Hill has become one of those songs that were a hit back when it was first released, but has since become synonymous with a contemporary show or movie. Other examples of this include the Glee effect on ‘ Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, the Hall & Oates ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’ scene in 500 Days of Summer and streams of Nirvana’s ‘ Something in the Way’ soaring after the release of last March’s The Batman.

Through the show, Kate Bush and the song have re-introduced themselves to a wide fandom and allowed it to take on an entirely new meaning to them. Music lovers can sometimes be protective of artists and songs and have a very ‘I was into it before it was cool’ mentality, but comments indicate that OG Kate Bush fans are actually happy to welcome these new fans to the fold and are glad that this song has seen a resurgence.

The song has also sparked numerous covers on YouTube and has even been remixed into a house music track.

Volume 2 of the 4th season of Stranger Things comes out on July 1st, and has already garnered over 630 tweets in the past two months leading up to it. Not only are we excited to see the rest of the story play out, but being the trend nerds we are, we’re looking forward to seeing which 80s songs they revive this time.

Write to us at anurag.banerjee@quilt.ai for the latest cultural trends.

Originally published at https://www.quilt.ai on June 30, 2022.