Thanks to the recognition of Stranger Things’ music-heavy fourth season and social media, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” has climbed up to the very top of music charts all over the world 37 years after the tune initially launched. A lot of Bush’s longtime (and customarily older) followers have felt a kind of method about youthful folks discovering her music for themselves by means of a sci-fi love letter to the ’80s. But Bush — herself a longtime Stranger Things fan — sees the sudden resurgence of curiosity in “Running Up That Hill” as an thrilling and touching testomony to the facility of artwork.
In a current interview with BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Bush — who usually doesn’t converse to the general public — opened up about what it’s been like to watch a brand new technology flip certainly one of her classics right into a present-day hit. Though Bush was already hooked on Stranger Things lengthy earlier than Netflix and the Duffer brothers referred to as her up, she didn’t anticipate to ever turn out to be concerned within the present’s lore, and the expertise has all felt very very similar to “the whole world’s gone mad.”
“What’s really wonderful, I think, is that this is a whole new audience who, in a lot of cases, they’d never heard of me,” Bush mentioned. “And I love that — the sort 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 opposite Hawkins children uncover that the one factor that can hold them protected from Vecna — the latest murderous terror that’s crawled out of the Upside Down — is by listening to songs they love. In most instances, Vecna psychically stalks his victims from one other dimension earlier than pulling them to him and tearing their our bodies aside, however Max is ready to break away from his thrall thanks to the cassette of “Running Up That Hill” that’s lived in her Walkman all season.
Though Stranger Things has at all times spotlighted pop cultural touchstones that formed the ’80s, Max’s fixation on “Running Up That Hill” is additionally a part of the collection’ exploration of how the character’s nonetheless grieving her brother Billy’s demise in season 3.
While Bush wrote “Running Up That Hill” as a love tune, she mentioned that she was touched by the best way Stranger Things frames the observe as a sort of emotional talisman for Max and a becoming alternative for the collection as its characters evolve and develop up with its actors.
“It’s lovely in a similar way to Harry Potter where in those early films that are just little kids,” Bush mentioned. “And then as the film is progressed, it becomes heavier and darker, and those little kids turn into really talented young adult actors. You have a different connection with something that’s the moved through years, really, of watching them grow.”
Like lots of her diehard followers who’re valuable about her music, she has her personal relationship to “Running Up That Hill,” a tune a few man and a lady longing to swap locations with each other “just to feel what it was like from the other side.”
Though Bush nonetheless very a lot thinks of the tune as “A Deal with God” — the title she initially supposed to give it — in her thoughts, she emphasised the significance of individuals having the ability to take what they need from artwork. As wrapped up in nostalgia as “Running Up That Hill” could also be for some folks, it’s a part of the now for others, which is why Bush is centered on residing within the second.
“I mean, there was some great music in the ’80s, but I think it’s an incredibly exciting time we’re in now,” Bush mentioned. “Okay, so it’s an awful time on a lot of levels for people. Very difficult. But it’s also a time when incredible things are happening. Technology is progressing at this incredible rate that’s pretty overwhelming, really. But, you know, there’s so many advances in medicine, and there are positive things. You just have to look a bit harder to find them at the moment.”
Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 hits Netflix on July 1st.
