(Credit: Netflix)

Gatekeeping can be a terrible thing, but fans of Kate Bush didn’t seem to mind in the slightest when the singer re-entered the cultural spotlight following her featured spot on Stranger Things.

The usage of Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ dredged up such a storm from gatekeepers the world over that the band themselves made a point of telling the world they don’t care how long anybody’s been listening to their music as long as they enjoy it, but the Bush fandom were never going to seize their online pitchforks and start acting jealously possessive.

It was a hit first time around when it released in August 1985 as the lead single of her fifth studio album Hounds of Love, reaching third place on the charts in the United Kingdom and her only top 40 hit in the United States when it managed to hit 30th position. Fast forward four decades, though, and it was bigger than ever before.

Movies and TV shows have the power to reignite cultural trends if they’re popular enough, and as arguably the marquee original series on Netflix and a major cultural talking point, deploying Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ as one of the recurring musical motifs in the fourth season of Stranger Things put it in with a good chance of embarking upon a massive resurgence.

She doesn’t licence out her back catalogue all that often, but as a self-confessed fan of the sci-fi series, Bush was more than happy to let Stranger Things have her song. When the fourth run of episodes dropped, Spotify revealed that listening figures for ‘Running Up That Hill’ jumped by almost 10,000% in the United States.

The track reached number one in Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, giving Bush her second number one in her home country and first since 1978’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. In 2022 it shifted more than a million copies in Britain alone, and it turned out that Winona Ryder may have been the principal driving force.

Before Stranger Things 4 had even aired, Ryder outlined her adoration. “I’ve been obsessed with her since I was a little girl,” she told USA Today. “I’ve also for the last seven years been dropping hints on set wearing my Kate Bush t-shirts. I don’t know if you did this, but in my school you had to dress down for PE, and sometimes I just wouldn’t. I’d just sit there with my headphones listening to her. She’s a hero of mine.”

There’s no guarantees Stranger Things creators Ross and Matt Duffer wouldn’t have settled on ‘Running Up That Hill’ eventually, but Ryder’s yearslong campaign to get her in the show ended up paying huge dividends for all involved.