With all of these year-end charts and lists, it’s easy to forget that one of the biggest songs of 2022 was from 1985: Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill,” experiencing a resurgence because of its unexpectedly large role in Stranger Things. She touched on the revival again in a new message on her website.
“It’s been a crazy, roller-coaster year for me,” she wrote. “I still reel from the success of RUTH, being the No. 1 track of this summer. What an honor! It was really exciting to see it doing so well globally, but especially here in the UK and Australia; and also to see it making it all the way to No. 3 in the US. It was such a great feeling to see so many of the younger generation enjoying the song. It seems that quite a lot of them thought I was a new artist! I love that!”
In July, she reacted to the Stranger Things finale. “I’ve just watched the last two episodes of Stranger Things and they’re just through the roof,” she wrote. No spoilers here, I promise. I’d only seen the scenes that directly involved the use of the track and so I didn’t know how the story would evolve or build. I was so delighted that the Duffer Brothers wanted to use RUTH for Max’s totem but now having seen the whole of this last series, I feel deeply honored that the song was chosen to become a part of their roller-coaster journey. I can’t imagine the amount of hard work that’s gone into making something on this scale. I am in awe. They’ve made something really spectacular.”