There are few songs that can top the charts decades after they were first released. A well-known example is “Stand By Me”– first released in 1961. At that time it reached #27 on the Billboard Charts. 25 years later when the film Stand By Me came out the song reached #1 and stayed there for 3 weeks. But, now in a new record is a song that went on sale the first time around in 1985 and is topping charts again a whopping 37 years later! This sets a world record for the most time elapsed between topping the charts for a single song.

Kate Bush Hounds of Love record
Via: Piano Piano!/Flickr

The tune in question was used many times in the course of season 4 of Stranger Things(2022). The song is “Running Up That Hill (Deal with God)” by English singer and songwriter Kate Bush. It was originally released on the Hounds of Love album in 1985 and reached the #30 spot on the US charts that year. Now the song gained so much popularity again overnight that the mostly-retired singer granted a rare interview about the “surreal” experience of having her music touch an entirely new generation (and reach #3 on the Billboard chart). She last performed on stage in 2014 and since then has grown to love gardening above most other pursuits.

The interview was for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Women’s Hour and was hosted by Emma Barnett in late June of 2022. While Bush has not granted many interviews in recent years, she did this one since her song has blown up again. Bush had been watching the show since the first season with her family, so she was all in when the the show staff approached her. “Music has a way of touching people” she said when asked what she thought about how the Duffer Brothers used the song as a source of salvation for the character of Max in the show.

Because of the audience dmeographic of the show, the song has now been embraced by a much younger generation and has sparked a bit of controversy. A lot of kids are now asking their older family and friends if they’ve “ever heard of” Kate Bush. She compared the show to Harry Potter, in that both series involve watching the kids grow up on screen. She finished her rare interview for Woman’s Hour with gratitude to her fans, both new and old.

According to Fortune magazine the reanimation of this hit in the first month since the show aired has garnered Bush another $2.3M in revenue from new fans downloading this song (and presumably they’ve also bought a few other albums and songs as well). Since then there is now a plan to re-issue the song as a CD single in the US for the first time.

On her website, Fish People, Bush wrote that after she agreed for the song to be used in the show she had only been shown the scenes when the songs were used, not entire episodes. Her update after having watched the 4th season was that she felt “deeply honored” to be a part of the characters’ “roller coaster journey”.

You can hear the entire interview with Bush right here. And, you can watch the groundbreaking music video for the song below, in which Bush shows off her formal dance training to perfection.

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