Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2.Thanks to its pitch-perfect placement in episode 4 of Stranger Things Season 4, Kate Bush's haunting, propulsive single "Running Up That Hill" is a worldwide hit, a mere 37 years after its release. Always a brilliant track, and long considered a classic, the song that opens Bush's masterwork Hounds of Love, is topping charts, making the singer millions, and breaking records. Its success has even inspired Spotify to create personalized Upside Down Playlists to help you find your own best song to fend off Vecna. Bush is, characteristically, surprised but grateful.
While it's unlikely the epic, tragic appearance of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" in the season finale will be a repeat of this wild, viral moment, it all shows again how the right song at the right moment can move both viewers and album sales.
But don't go expecting Stranger Things to go around minting new chart-toppers in Season 5. Speaking to series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, Collider's Steve Weintraub found out that the producers had not only never anticipated the world's reaction to "Running Up That Hill" but aren't planning on attempting to repeat that success, either.
"'The 'Running up that Hill,' the Kate Bush thing, [is] so bizarre," said Matt Duffer. "I'm not on TikTok, but people are like, 'Oh, it's all over TikTok!' I don't even really understand what that means, but it's just bizarre how that stuff happens." No one does, really, and, yes, it's somewhat bizarre that an English art-rock treasure notched her first number-1 single thanks to a retro-horror series that is viewable only through technology only half as old as her career. Still, it's a stroke of internet-era luck any musician would welcome.
Musicians, however, should not hold onto hope that the Duffers and legions of Netflix subscribers will soon be knocking on their doors. If this all happens again, it will be just as bizarre and unplanned as the last time. "Whether it happens again with another band," said Matt, "I don't know. It's certainly the type of thing you're not going to, in Season 5, attempt to replicate." He adds, "I'm already getting asked that question, it's like, 'What song are [you] going to do in Season 5?' I'm like, 'We're not going to do that again.' Because if we do it, it will fail." Yeah, it likely would. Lightening is notoriously hard to bottle and, alas, there's only one Kate Bush.
Stranger Things Season 4 is streaming now on Netflix.