Pop culture.. oh how we scratch our heads..
We have had nothing but high praise for Stranger Things season 4 (and the others too 🙂 ) .. This season, as usual with the show, a side story took off and rolled. In seasons past, it had something vaguely to do with 80s pop culture. No different now.
The Kate Bush song RUNNING UP THAT HILL was used perfectly in episode 4, Dear Billy. As a matter of fact, it immediately became perhaps one of the most amazing scenes in all four seasons so far, and led fans into an emotional roller coaster as Max clung for her life against Vecna, the new villain.
And it also made Kate Bush very happy!
The song is surging on modern music charts!
Included with the surge are memes like this:
BUT.. there are some online–especially the “socials” like Twitter–who are not happy.
Such as this:
The DAILY BEAST is showcasing a number of Kate Bush fans that they call “pissed.” (By the way, headline writers are the perfect illustration of the fall of American society, no?)
They “report:”
The song is now taking the world by storm, nearly 40 years after its release. Just search “Kate Bush” on Twitter and you’ll see a flurry of reactions—people discovering the song for the first time, longtime fans celebrating the resurrection, and a handful of folks a little more upset about the song resurfacing.
“Kate Bush did not go through wuthering heights, run all the way up that hill to make a deal with god & shout babooshka for y’all to be finding out about her in 2022!” one user shamed Stranger Things fans.
Another user threatened, “If y’all start calling Kate Bush’s music the stranger things songs I’m gonna kill you.”
The oracle of all knowledge, the BEAST, goes on to say,
“Running Up That Hill” was, indeed, around long before Stranger Things—nearly four decades—and Kate Bush even longer. But Stranger Things also has a young (and massive) fanbase. Where else are they meant to find Kate Bush’s music? If it wasn’t in Stranger Things, it’d be on TikTok. Not every teenager is frequenting record stores in hunt for classic music to listen to when Harry Styles just released a new album.
Fine, fine.. call my bitter–especially perhaps since I am slowly slipping into a whole new demographic for voting and Neilson ratings–but there are also some middle aged and older fans too who love Stranger Things. And people who loved Kate Bush if they were teenagers in the 1980s..
“Gonna kill you” for calling a Kate Bush song the Stranger Things song? That’s pretty tense.
Just putting this out there, my past “Halloween” related playlists have included songs from Stranger Things’ previous seasons. I would only assume my 2022 autumnal playlist will include Kate Bush.
Because it kind of sort of is the Stranger Things song now.
Really.. you think she’d mind?
A lot of people seem to be pretty bothered that Stranger Things introduced newer fans to Kate Bush.
But see, that is how it works, for those who are angry.
This is good. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, I watched reruns of old shows.. I listened to older music. I came to appreciate those little things I never experienced by living vicariously through pop culture.
Pop culture is not yours to own..You just belong to the period of time you were cultured in.. Your decade or era is not dead when you die. It becomes fabric in the entire wardrobe of culture and entertainment. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
So get over it boomers.. Or zoomers. Or doomers. Whatever your generational name is. Just enjoy this moment, plus the added bonus for Kate Bush fans is now you’ll hear her songs more. Maybe even on the old fashioned radio!
If teenagers are in love with this song, just imagine when they find the rest.
