Why we can fall for the Kate Bush scam
The 80’s are back and they’re bringing Kate Bush with them
Quelle: © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
The makers of Stranger Things have given Kate Bush’s ’80s pop hit a new lease of life. And vice versa. Many see this as a pure marketing ploy. Even so, there’s a good reason Running up that Hill still works.
Dhe 80s are back. Teenagers are wearing tie-dye shirts and pastel shades again. It is also evident in the music. One of the most popular songs on TikTok is a cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”. However, it lags behind the new success of Kate Bush’s “Running up that Hill”. The 1985 song was catapulted back into the charts with the new season of Stranger Things. And is more successful today than it was then.
So he made it to number 8 in the US charts for the first time. “New life was breathed into the song,” writes the singer Kate Bush on her website, probably meaning a little bit of herself. The cult surrounding the Brit is otherwise unbroken. In July, Australian fans get together in Kate Bush outfits – red dress, red belt – to dance to her song “Wuthering Heights”. In 2013, 300 people attended a similar event.
The interesting thing about it is less that the 80s aesthetic still works so well than why it annoys music journalists so much in connection with a Netflix series. Kristoffer Cornils gets upset on “Deutschlandfunk” about cynical cross-marketing. The music selection would be adapted more and more for marketing purposes. The “Spiegel” also sees the song in the series as “cheated”. The piece itself is “great art”, but adds nothing to the aesthetics of the series, but simply fits into the well-known 80s backdrop, writes Oliver Kaever: a pure “marketing tool on a huge mountain of merchandise”.
We’ve gotten used to product placement. It doesn’t matter whether certain cornflakes packs or types of juice are sneaking around in the picture or influencers openly thank their sponsors at the beginning of their videos. But music is different, music is personal. “Running up that Hill” is about a breakup that is described painfully-beautifully: “Is there so much hate for those we love? Tell me, we both count, don’t we?” Lines drumming straight to the heart through the drums. Lines that might have moved aspiring music journalists when they were teenagers and the song just came out.
Because the biggest excitement seems to be: Cross-marketing works. Kate Bush, who is said to be a “Stranger Things” fan, is publicly pleased not only with the success of her art, but also with the second part of the fourth season. What’s so annoying about that? Maybe that the billion-dollar group Netflix limits a work of art to its functionality as a marketing tool. The song no longer reaches for our souls, but for our wallets! In the artificial product, the second part now comes first.
But does it really? Stranger Things is set in the 80’s and “Running up that Hill” is an iconic pop song of the time. The lyrics also fit the plot. It’s about defiance in the face of despair: “It doesn’t hurt me… I’ll run up the street, run up the hill, run up the building. If I just could…”. (Spoilers: on the show, Max Mayfield, the strong, independent skater girl with the aggressive stepbrother, listens to this song over and over as she struggles through the underworld). The cover versions of “Elestic Band” and “Placebo” also show how attractive the song is. And it still touches young people today. The song is a classic. And the basic principle of classics: They are timeless.