The release of part one of the fourth season of Stranger Things, Netflix’s retro sci-fi juggernaut, was always going to draw a huge amount of attention, being one of the service’s flagship shows. This was ratcheted up by the company’s recent struggles with subscriber loss, leaving them in need of a hit. The latest offering, as expected, is thoroughly entertaining and has been hugely successful. Strangely, one of the biggest stories to come out of it has been the huge surge in popularity of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill,’ which is used in the show. This is nothing new for Stranger Things, as the first season renewed interest in The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ in 2016, though on a much smaller scale. ‘Running Up That Hill’ has not only topped the charts and broken numerous records in the process,but it also currently boasts upwards of 250 million Spotify streams. The ability for a song, first released in 1985, to become so hugely popular in 2022, is somewhat of a novelty. The current state of mass media and social media culture has provided the environment in which this can happen. This leads to some interesting questions about how we consume music today, why organisations like Netflix hold such sway over listening habits, and what this means for music as an art form.
It is fairly clear why this has been able to happen. The pre-eminence of Netflix and its power over viewing habits, after building a reputation over the years as the way to watch films and TV, has exposed millions of people to the song. Viral culture has also had a part to play. TikTok, since its rise to insane levels of popularity, has been a platform on which unexpected songs are popularised (or repopularised) and ‘Running Up That Hill’ has found a further audience on the site after its inclusion on Stranger Things caught the attention of its huge online community. This perfect storm of a ubiquitous, influential streaming service and a social media platform that thrives on turning songs into trends has given Kate Bush her first number-one single since ‘Wuthering Heights’ in 1978. Bush has been vocal in thanking her newfound audience for this unexpected success and, while it’s great to see her experiencing renewed popularity (especially in the States where she isn’t as well known), the upshot of this in terms of how it reflects on society’s relationship with the arts is more complex.
The case for this being a positive sign for popular culture is relatively simple: ‘Running Up That Hill’ is a fantastic pop song and Kate Bush is an innovative, unique, and accomplished artist whose music has aged well. Therefore, this being more heavily exposed to and appreciated by a general audience should be seen as a good outcome. In the age of streaming services, it is easier than ever to listen to music (or consume any media) from any era or genre, making exploration in music accessible to all. However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that this song is a gateway to a new appreciation of great music beyond this one track. Hounds of Love, the album that the song is taken from, is largely regarded as a classic and one of the greatest pop albums of all time (it is ranked #68 in Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums of all time) so one might expect that the natural thing to do, after hearing the song, is listen to the album or other tracks by the artist. However, according to Spotify’s streaming numbers, ‘Running Up That Hill’ has over ten times more streams than the title track from Hounds of Love, which is another of Bush’s most popular songs. Therefore, it seems that the song that Stranger Things has co-opted is as far as most people’s interest stretches.
On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with the singular focus on one song, but it is worth looking into why this is. One of the reasons TikTok is so popular is the appeal of brief videos and the instant gratification they provide. If someone sees 30 short videos a day all featuring the same music, the song is bound to leave an impression as an isolated soundbite, not part of an album, genre, or artist’s back catalogue. Furthermore, one of the main reasons for the popularity of Stranger Things is its neat packaging of nostalgia fetishism. There is a huge appeal in the retro feel, whether that is invoked by music from a certain era or references to media of the time, the appearance of comic books and old videogames being another example. This was realised previously by the makers of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014: apart from among Reservoir Dogs fans, the song ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ was largely forgotten until the film came out and ‘Escape’ by Rupert Holmes certainly became more well known as a result of its inclusion. In that instance, the soundtrack was a big hit, and the songs seemed to be everywhere, but didn’t really lead to any kind of change in music tastes, it was a dead end. Like with ‘Running Up That Hill,’ people wanted to hear the exact songs that they heard in the film, nothing more. The desire for palatable, modernised retro is a defining feature of current tastes in film and television, leading studios to curate these time capsules for the viewer, sometimes resulting in new popularity for the songs they choose. While there is nothing wrong with this, or with streaming services capitalising on it, people with an interest in music would do well to listen to Hounds of Love rather than wait to be provided with their next favourite classic hit by a popular TV show.
Ultimately, the fact of the song’s popularity is undeniably positive because it’s a great song and people should listen to great music. But this doesn’t need to end here. If a song that is largely unfamiliar to a younger audience can resonate with so many, this should be proof that there is amazing music from all eras and all genres to be discovered. In an age when music is so accessible, I hope that some people, through this phenomenon, will discover Kate Bush’s catalogue (I’d recommend The Kick Inside, The Dreaming, and Hounds of Love as standout albums), and go on to explore music more widely, rather than wait for it to be included in a soundtrack. Rather than being an opportunity for music enthusiasts to complain and gatekeep, this should be a chance to show others an open gateway that has been there for everyone all along.
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