Kate Bush scoring an unexpected smash hit with a 37-year old song? Stranger things, if you can excuse the pun, have happened, but not many. Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), which initially reached No 3 in the UK in 1985, has suddenly soared to the top of the UK and US iTunes charts after featuring in the Netflix series Stranger Things. It has also rocketed to no 4 in the the Spotify Top 200 chart – after a 153% increase in streams – and the Stranger Things effect means it is now the artist’s most-streamed track, toppling the hallowed Wuthering Heights.
Stranger Things – a supernatural/sci-fi horror set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, in the 1980s – is a particular smash with the Generation Z of 10 to 25-year-olds, and so is exposing our vulnerable youth to all manner of audio and visual nostalgia, from period pop to mullet haircuts.
