KATE Bush is top of the charts. Top Gun is packing out cinemas. And Scott and Charlene are back in Ramsay Street.
Welcome to the mid-1980s.
Nostalgia is booming right now. Just ask Abba, currently basking in five-star reviews and mega advance ticket sales for their virtual concert residency.
With its quirky nod to Eighties pop culture, from Stand by Me to The Goonies, it is nostalgia that lies at the heart of Netflix teen thriller hit Stranger Things. And that is of course how Kate Bush has found herself heading to No.1 this week, with a 37-year-old song - beating Harry Styles by a country mile.
First released in 1985, Kate’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) is now the most streamed song in the world, with nearly eight million plays a day on Spotify. Thanks to Stranger Things, which features the song in a gripping scene blending psychological terror with a radio-cassette player, Running Up That Hill has also reached the Top 10 in America, Australia and several European countries.
The enigma herself has responded, in a rare message on her website, and is “astounded” and thrilled that a new generation is discovering her work.
While Kate is happy with the song’s re-birth, it seems some of her fans don’t approve. Purists are seething that this track is being streamed by people who know nothing of the Bush back catalogue. “So you’ve ‘discovered’ Kate Bush via Netflix? Now listen to the whole album - if your attention span can cope.” “If you have to ask ‘who sang the original?’ you don’t deserve this song...” “I don’t need Stranger Things to love this masterpiece,” came some of the rather precious tweets.
It’s all just too mainstream for those fans who guard their beloved Kate’s music with a smug sense of ownership, just because they have all her vinyl and know the lyrics to the obscure stuff. They need to learn to share.
I too am a fan, with Kate Bush vinyl, and I too know the obscure stuff. I was at her Hammersmith Apollo residency in 2014, and it was a highlight of my life. But I discovered Kate Bush on Top of the Pops - which was about as mainstream and family-friendly as a music show could get. Where else was I going to discover her? She only did one tour which, since I was 11, I wasn’t even aware of at the time. I was reading Jackie, not the NME!
When I finally got her debut album, The Kick Inside (on cassette - how very Stranger Things) for Christmas, I got to know and love the eccentric beauty of her music.
Watching Kate Bush sing Wuthering Heights on telly is surely how most veteran fans first came across her, unless they’re Dave Gilmour (Google him, kids). So they shouldn’t be so sniffy about Gen Z finding her music via a TV show.
While most kids probably won’t make an effort to check out her albums, those who do might find they don’t have the patience or stomach for Kate Bush after all. My nephew still recalls being terrified by a track from The Dreaming, where Kate brays like like a hysterical donkey, that I once played him as a child.
Who cares if they listen to her albums or not? I doubt most of the kids who watched her on Top of the Pops, or Swap Shop or Ask Aspel (Saint Kate was no stranger to mainstream telly, back in the day) did either.
Get over yourselves, music snobs. We all have to find pop classics somewhere, and films, TV shows and adverts have always introduced us to tracks and artists we’d never heard of.
What inspired the teenage Kate Bush to write Wuthering Heights? A 1970s TV movie. Just saying.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here