The Song

How Running Up That Hill conquered the world. Twice.

By TOM DOYLE.

NO ONE COULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING. During the late spring and summer this year, Kate Bush’s 1985 hit Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) enjoyed a barely credible commercial resur-gence, spot-lit by its usage in the fourth season of the Netflix sci-fi horror series Stranger Things. Over mul-tiple episodes, Bush’s Hounds Of Love keynote emerged as not just a groovy soundtrack inclusion but instead as an essential narrative device. Beleaguered tomboy teen Max Mayfield de-ploys the song as a sonic talisman; played through the headphones of her cassette Walkman, it strengthens her in her battles against a supernatural, serial-killing entity.

The post-Stranger Things stats were staggering. Fuelled by an average six million Spotify streams per day in June and July, Running Up That Hill became the most-played track in the world, twice topping Billboard’s Global 200 chart. In the UK, it reached Number 1 and stayed there for three weeks, tr umping its initial ’85 chart placing of Number 3, while also hitting the top spot in Australia, Ireland, Belgium, Lithuania, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Switzerland and Sweden. In the US – where the song had previously been Bush’s biggest hit at Number 30 – it gave the singer her first American Top 5 hit when it reached Number 4.

Meanwhile in the UK, she broke no less than three Guinness World Records: oldest female artist to reach Number 1 (at the age of 63), longest time for a track to reach the top of the charts (37 years) and biggest gap between Number 1s (44 years since Wuthering Heights). Music sales data company Luminate calculated that this year alone the track has earned Kate Bush $2.3 million (and counting).