Kate Bush is back in the Top 10 of the UK singles chart for only the third time since the 1980s, after her song Running Up That Hill found a new global audience via the Netflix drama Stranger Things.
Running Up That Hill, which reached No 3 on its initial release in 1985, reaches No 8 this week based on streams and downloads. After a slow start at the beginning of the week, when it was well outside the Top 100, its popularity grew as listeners sought it out following the premiere of Stranger Things’ fourth season last Friday; Running Up That Hill plays a key part in the fourth episode.
It is now the most-streamed song each day on Spotify in the US and the UK, just shy of Harry Styles’ As It Was in Spotify’s global chart, and in the same No 2 position on Apple Music. The song is also expected to place highly in the US charts, which are announced on Tuesday.
This is Running Up That Hill’s third appearance in the UK Top 10; it also re-entered in 2012 after it was used in the closing ceremony of the Olympics. For that version, Bush rerecorded the song at a slightly lower pitch to accommodate for changes to her voice.
Bush has reached the UK Top 10 on six other occasions. She topped it with her debut single Wuthering Heights in 1978, then had Top 10s with The Man With the Child in His Eyes; the live EP Kate Bush on Stage; Babooshka; Don’t Give Up (her duet with Peter Gabriel); and King of the Mountain, her comeback single in 2005, following more than a decade away from recording. Twelve of her albums have reached the Top 10, three of them No 1s.
Running Up That Hill’s latest success demonstrates the cultural might of supernatural thriller Stranger Things, which registered the biggest premiere weekend ever on Netflix, with viewers spending 287m hours watching the first seven episodes. The rest of the season will be released in July.
With its distinctive martial rhythm, spectral synth sounds and a commanding vocal performance from Bush, Running Up That Hill is one of the most critically admired songs of the 1980s. Bush spoke about the song in a 1986 interview:
It’s very much about two people who are in love, a man and a woman, and the idea of it is they could swap places ... The man being the woman and vice versa and they’d understand each other better. In some ways [the song is] talking about the fundamental differences between men and women, I suppose trying to remove those obstacles, being in someone else’s place; understanding how they see it, and hoping that would remove problems in the relationship.
At No 1 this week is Styles, with As It Was in its ninth week at the top, and his album track Late Night Talking at No 4. British singer-songwriter Cat Burns is at No 2, the highest position yet for her slow-burn hit Go, which was released in July 2020. It will make a strong challenge for the top next week, with a duet version with Sam Smith getting a release on Monday.
In the album chart, Liam Gallagher scores a fourth solo No 1 with new album C’mon You Know, while his new live album, Down By the River Thames, reaches No 4. Def Leppard reach the Top 5 for the first time in 26 years with new album Diamond Star Halos.
Queen, who will perform during the platinum jubilee celebrations on Saturday at Buckingham Palace, become the first British act to notch up 1,000 weeks for an album on the album chart. Their greatest hits album (at No 18 this week) sits behind similar greatest hits packages by Bob Marley (1,032 weeks) and Abba (1,048 weeks). The latter returns to the Top 10 this week thanks to the group’s Abba Voyage live show beginning at a bespoke arena in east London last weekend.
Also sneaking into the Top 20 singles in time for the platinum jubilee is a commemorative track with a difference: punk band the Kunts, with their song Prince Andrew Is a Sweaty Nonce. This is the Essex band’s third Top 20 hit, having twice reached No 5, in 2020 and 2021, with songs criticising Boris Johnson in similarly robust terms.
