Running Up That Hill

This time it's the charts that have ended up in the Upside Down. The power of TV series, and one in particular — "Stranger Things" — which, after all, makes ample use of magic and supernatural powers itself. It turns out that a few plays on the walkman of one of the story's central characters, Maxine "Max" Mayfield (Sadie Sink), were enough to send Kate Bush and her "Running Up That Hill" racing back up to that hilltop — meaning the charts — which 37 years ago it had only glimpsed from afar. Sure, times have changed: back then, that 30th spot on the Billboard Hot 100 certainly counted for more than today's ethereal number one on iTunes (not to mention #29 on Spotify UK, with 161,100 streams), but the fact that a song from 1985 can climb out of the attic of memory and blow past songs by contemporary pop stars like Lady Gaga, Lizzo and Harry Styles is still remarkable, proof of how TV series have become a formidable vehicle for music promotion — far more effective than other channels still stubbornly pursued by our prehistoric record labels and PR agencies. For those who want to dig deeper into the topic, we suggest our podcast on the subject, titled "Sound and Television".

Without venturing into too many spoilers, suffice it to reveal that in the fourth season of the 80s-set teen sci-fi series, whose first seven episodes Netflix is currently airing, Max, the red-haired girl still traumatized by the death of her stepbrother Billy, shuts herself away in dangerous isolation, relying solely on music to ease her pain. But the fact that it's precisely "Running Up That Hill" playing endlessly on her walkman is no accident: the song tells of a deal with God ("A Deal With God" was meant to be the title, later changed because the word "God" in a song title was deemed inappropriate) to be struck by crossing the fateful hill, in order to swap one's own life with that of another person. "It's about a relationship between a man and a woman. They love each other very much, and the power of the relationship is something that gets in the way, creates insecurities," Kate Bush explained in a 1985 interview. "She's saying, if the man could be the woman and the woman the man, if they could make a deal with God to change places, then they'd understand what it's like to be the other person, and maybe that would clear up the misunderstandings." Hence Max's torment, as she wonders how she might have made her relationship with her late brother less fraught. Right up to that line, "Let me steal this moment from you now," which takes on a very specific meaning once you see how the story unfolds…

This isn't the first time, after all, that the adventures of the kids of Hawkins have revived the fortunes of an old hit: it had already happened, for instance, with Limahl's "The NeverEnding Story" (1984), whose YouTube and Spotify searches jumped by 800% after it appeared in the third season. But topping the iTunes chart is a far less predictable feat.

A curious fate, then, for the key track of that new sonic turn the singer-songwriter behind "Babooshka" had crowned in the mid-1980s. Coming off the success of the formidable (and misunderstood) "The Dreaming", an eccentric concept album steeped in art-pop, folk, prog and world music, Kate Bush wanted to give a different kind of follow-up to such a bold work. She needed something less complex but equally sophisticated to win back the loyal British audience, who had grown fond of her evolution from the enfant-prodige of "Wuthering Heights" (launched with help from a certain David Gilmour) into a refined experimentalist. Hence those years of seclusion, away from the public eye, spent honing her production skills and mastery of the Fairlight synthesizer even further. The intrepid Catherine's final breakthrough would anticipate by a year the new direction her kindred spirit Peter Gabriel would pursue starting with "So": pushing experimentation forward without giving up contemporaneity or a sharper pop accessibility.

The mid-80s saw big pop stars moving millions of people on the dancefloor and flirting with audiences on MTV through increasingly aggressive rhythms. With her new album "Hounds Of Love", the first recorded entirely in her home studio, the "new" Kate — even provocative on the glossy album cover — feared no comparison. Of course, her intellectual ambitions hadn't been set aside, starting with "Cloudbusting", made famous by a video featuring Donald Sutherland, dedicated to the story of Sigmund Freud's student Wilhelm Reich, the mid-20th-century psychoanalyst who theorized the existence of orgone energy linked to sexuality and orgasm. And it's especially in the second half of the album that the Kent-born artist would draw on the full extent of her experimental potential, effectively crafting a "record within a record" (take, for example, the seven-part suite titled "The Ninth Wave"), where her boundless vocal range finds ample expression, conjuring gothic fairy tales and Celtic folk, medieval mysticism and witches' spells, tribal rites and the most ethereal pop.

But the manifesto of the entire album would remain that very first, memorable lead single. The martial, galloping beat of "Running Up That Hill" underpins a dreamlike landscape over which Bush's voice settles restlessly, at times dramatic, yet never losing that funky phrasing which makes it, in practice, a track with undeniable radio appeal. A song that stands as a symbol of a pop sophistication forever vivid through time. A sensual, unreachable light. Indeed, even before finding new fame thanks to "Stranger Things", the track would be tackled by wildly different bands, as attested by the most celebrated covers released from the 2000s onward (Within Temptation, Placebo, Chromatics, First Aid Kit). Fantastic, and as ever extremely alluring, is the video featuring Kate dancing like a dazed goddess alongside dancer Michael Hervieu.

Now, after years of unrepentant cult devotion from her followers, Kate is dancing back into our ears. And who knows if some of the credit doesn't also belong to Winona Ryder, aka Joyce Byers, one of the leads in the series created by brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, who revealed in an interview: "I've been obsessed with Kate Bush since I was a little girl. Sometimes at school I'd sit with my headphones on listening to her. She was a hero to me. Over the last seven years, I've given musical suggestions on set, directly and indirectly. For instance, I'd wear my Kate Bush t-shirt!" And who knows whether she too was among the lucky ones who got to attend one of the 22 shows of the London residency "Before The Dawn" at the Eventim Apollo Hammersmith, with which, in 2014, the English singer-songwriter ended a thirty-five-year absence from the stage.

Caught off guard by this unexpected rekindling, Kate Bush herself felt compelled to comment on the success, with this message: "It's all so exciting! Running Up That Hill has gone to No. 1 in Norway and Austria. That's great news, and we've just heard today that it's gone from No. 8 to No. 4 in the United States. The song is getting such a wonderfully positive response in so many ways. I've never experienced anything like this before! I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone in the States who has supported the song. It's the first time I've had a single in the top ten there, and now it's in the top 5! Thank you so much again to the Duffer Brothers: thanks to their latest, extraordinary season of Stranger Things, the song is being discovered by a whole new audience."

In any case, the "Stranger Things" effect is bringing many 80s gems back into the spotlight, from Journey's "Separate Ways", chosen to accompany the images in the trailer for the final season, to Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus", to Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer". But none of these tracks has managed the feat achieved by Kate Bush's run up the hill.

The real miracle, though, is that "Running Up That Hill" still sounds as fresh as if it had come out the day before yesterday, with its irresistible drive and its sumptuous vocal performance. A Deal With God that, in the end, turns out to be not so different from the deal with the Devil of Faustian memory — except Goethe's Mephistopheles had allowed for 24 years, not 37.

Contributions by Giuliano Delli Paoli and Stefano Fiori ("Hounds Of Love")

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