Photo Credit: Adam Bowie / CC by 2.0
Kate Bush achieves her first ever US Top 10 hit with Running Up That Hill, 37 years after its release.
The song features as a critical plot point in the latest season of Netflix’s supernatural series Stranger Things, and its popularity has exploded since the season’s debut on May 27. “Running Up That Hill” is now number 8 in the US and UK singles charts, and the second-most played song globally on both Apple Music and Spotify, behind Harry Styles’ “Future’s Wait for U” and “As It Was,” respectively.
In 1985 when the song was first released, its highest chart placement in the US was only number 30. The massive shift in popularity recently prompted Kate Bush to post a statement on her website, saying that it’s “really exciting” that the song is “being given a whole new lease of life by the young fans who love the show — I love it too!”
It’s rare for an older song to re-enter the US Top 10, except for Christmas songs which re-chart at the end of each year. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” reached number 2 in 1992 after being featured in the film Wayne’s World, and in 2020 Fleetwood Mac came into the Top 10 with 1977’s “Dreams” after its use in a viral TikTok video.
Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” her debut single in 1978, entered the US Spotify Viral 100 chart this week at number 97 after “Running Up That Hill” prompted fans to listen to more of her work. The song was released initially on her The Kick Inside album and was a number-one single in the UK, making Kate Bush the first female artist in the country to achieve a number-one hit with a self-penned song.
“Wuthering Heights” is inspired by the 1847 Emily Brontë novel of the same name, sung from the perspective of the character Catherine Earnshaw and quotes dialogue from the book.