It’s entirely possible that in the fifth decade of her career, Kate Bush is enjoying bigger global popularity than ever before – particularly in the United States – thanks to the use of her 1985 classic “Running Up That Hill” as a pivotal plot device in the fourth season of “Stranger Things.”
While the reclusive singer has long enjoyed superstar status in her native England, has collaborated with artists from Prince to Peter Gabriel and has written and recorded such well-known songs as “Wuthering Heights,” “This Woman’s Work” (made famous when covered in 1996 by Maxwell) and others, her highest chart placement on the Billboard Hot 100 was when “Running Up That Hill” peaked at No. 30 in November of 1985.
Yet all of that may change on next week’s chart, based on the numbers the song has posted in the days after the “Stranger Things” premiere last weekend. It is rare for Bush to approve the use of her songs in film and television, but it turns out she is a fan of “Stranger Things” and approved the multiple uses in the show.
In overall audio consumption, “Running Up That Hill” saw its biggest surge between Monday and Wednesday, per data from Luminate, jumping from 12,000 on-demand streams on Sunday to nearly 34,000 stream equivalent songs on Wednesday (June 1). Compared to the previous week, when the song logged plays in the hundreds of streams, it represented a jump of more than 8,000%. Airplay also saw a bump of nearly 330% as audience for the song went from 41,000 to over 422,000 in a week.
Video saw the biggest increase, logging a nearly 15,000% rise from the previous week.
On Spotify, Monday saw an 8,700% increase in global streams of the song. There was a more than 9,900% increase in Spotify streams in the U.S., and a more than 1,600% increase in global streams of Kate Bush’s catalog.
