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Thanks to the popularity of stranger thingsIn its music-heavy fourth season and on social media, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” has climbed to the top of the music charts worldwide, 37 years after the song was first released. A number of Bush’s longtime (and generally older) fans have a sense that younger folks discovered her music as a sci-fi love letter to the ’80s. But Bush – she herself has long been stranger things Fan – sees the sudden resurgence of interest in Running Up That Hill as an exciting and touching testament to the power of art.
In a recent interview with BBC Radio 4 hour of the woman, Bush – who doesn’t usually speak to the public – shared what it’s like to watch a new generation transform one of their classics into a current hit. Although Bush was already hooked stranger things Well before Netflix and the Duffer brothers called her, she wasn’t expecting to ever get caught up in the show’s story, and the experience has all felt like “the whole world has gone crazy.”
“What’s really wonderful, I think, is that this is a whole new audience that in many cases has never heard of me,” Bush said. “And I love that — the way of all these really young people hearing the song for the first time and discovering it is, well, I think it’s very special.”
In the first half of stranger things 4, Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) and the other Hawkins kids discover that the only thing that can keep them safe from Vecna - the latest murderous terror to crawl out of the Upside Down – is to listen to songs that you love. More often than not, Vecna stalks his victims from another dimension before pulling them towards him and ripping their bodies apart, but Max is able to get by thanks to the Running Up That Hill tape, which lives entirely in her Walkman release his bondage season.
Even though stranger things Max’s fixation on “Running Up That Hill” has always spotlighted the pop culture touchstones that defined the ’80s, and also forms part of the series’ exploration of how the character is still grappling with her brother’s death in Season 3 Billy mourns.
While Bush wrote “Running Up That Hill” as a love song, she said she was touched by the way stranger things frames the track as something of an emotional talisman for Max and an apt choice for the series as its characters evolve and grow up with its actors.
“It’s beautiful in a similar way Harry Potter where in those early movies that are just little kids,” Bush said. “And then as the film progresses it gets heavier and darker and these little kids become really talented young adult actors. They have a different connection to something that’s been moving over the years, really, watching them grow.
Like many of her die-hard fans who appreciate her music, she has her own connection to “Running Up That Hill,” a song about a man and woman who long to switch places “just to feel like it was The Other Side.”
Although Bush still loves to refer to the song as “A Deal with God” — the title she originally wanted to give it — she stressed the importance of people being able to take what they want from art. As nostalgic as “Running Up That Hill” may be for some people, for others it’s part of the now, which is why Bush focuses on living in the moment.
“I mean, there was some great music in the ’80s, but I think it’s an incredibly exciting time that we’re in now,” Bush said. “Okay, so it’s a terrible time for people on many levels. Very difficult. But it’s also a time when incredible things are happening. Technology is advancing at this incredible speed, which is really quite mind-blowing. But you know, there are so many advances in medicine, and there are positive things. At the moment you just have to search a little more closely to find them.”
Stranger Things 4 Vol 2 Coming to Netflix on July 1st.
