FEATURE:
‘The Kate Bush Effect’ in 2022 and Beyond
IN THIS PHOTO: Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in Netflix’s Wednesday
Can Shows like Wednesday Follow the Footsteps of Stranger Things?
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THIS is very much a Kate Bush feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing on Peter's Pop Show on 30th November, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: ZIK Images/United Archives/GI
but it is a springing board to something wider and deeper. In a couple of features about Bush that I will include before the end of the year, I am discussing her 2022. Going into this year, people didn’t really expect much to happen in terms of her music and popularity. Sure, there was always an outside chance an album could have come out – as it has now been eleven years since her current, 50 Words for Snow. Books and articles have been written about her, because she is always relevant and a fascinating source of influence and motivation. A complex and genius artist with so many layers and sides, there’s been an impressive smattering of things written about Bush. I suspect that will continue in 2023, as the tension and anticipation rises regarding new material. Surely Bush has been working on something given the love she has received this year?! Maybe it is a cheap and easy term, but there is something called ‘The Kate Bush Effect’. I do not think it is a new phenomenon, but Bush’s year has been defined by her song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) appearing on the Netflix smash show, Stranger Things. It is quite a dark and gothic show in many ways, and I think many people associate Bush with things dark, witch-like and suspenseful. There has been this perception of her from many since she released her 1978 debut single, Wuthering Heights. Taken from Hounds of Love (1985), Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was brought to a new audience thanks to a pivotal and powerful scene in Stranger Things. It played quite a big part, and Bush was involved with its placement and giving it a green light.
I am going to discuss Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) more when I look back at her 2022 and the fact that this event and song was so important. Because the track appeared on Stranger Things, it finally got to number one in the U.K., set records in the proves (including the longest time between number one songs, as Wuthering Heights hit the top in 1978), and saw the streaming figures for the track skyrocket! I am going to end with an article that suggest older music like this has been more prominent in 2022 than new music. I don’t agree artists like Kate Bush have taken money and focus away from other artists. In fact, this year has been more stuffed with great and diverse talent than any other! Also, it is not often that this sort of thing happens for her! The fact this song has connected with people who (for some weird reason) had never heard it before is a good thing! It has resulted in Bush getting a new generation of fans behind her, and they have discovered her catalogue in the process! I am getting to an article that suggests Sony resurrected Kate Bush’s 1985 single:
“Which brings us to Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” which was released in 1985 and ends 2022 as the 12th most-consumed song of the year. How did the song end up sitting alongside hits by Drake and Dua Lipa 37 years after its original release? “Stranger Things” happened. Season 4 specifically, which used “Running Up that Hill” as a musical theme connecting to the character Max, and repeated it on multiple episodes in its original form and as an orchestral version.
The road to clearing the song’s use on the Netflix hit was a long one, and started with convincing the elusive Kate Bush to agree to its placement. On this episode of the Strictly Business podcast, Sony Music Publishing’s VP of Creative Amy Coles, who Variety has named its Hitbreaker of the Year for 2022, took us through the process of a successful sync and explains the unique role she plays in the music for screens ecosystem”.
I would agree strongly against any assertion Sony or any person resurrected Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). It is not an obscure song by any long stretch. Bush is one of the most popular artists in all of music. Her music is played around the world! Maybe the U.S. have not fully embraced or understood her, though Hounds of Love was an album that did well there and finally got her the success and attention she deserved. Prior to 2022, this song was one of Bush’s best-known and most-played. It is a massive song that has not gone anywhere - and is one of those tracks people instantly associate with Bush or pick when asked to name one of her songs. Rather than this non-obscure song being ‘resurrected’, it was simply brought to a new audience who, in turn, helped make it a chart success. Regardless, this effect was created. An older song that was maybe not hugely fashionable or relatable to the young generations now, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is now cool and powerful because of the association with Stranger Things. In the context of the song being played on a show during such intense and amazing scenes has led to people speculating which other legacy artists might have their music brought to the fore in the same way. This takes me to another Netflix show with a more gothic and darker feel, Wednesday. Starring the magnificent Jenna Ortega in the titular role, there is a song by The Cramps that has featured in an especially memorable scene that may get the same sort of focus as Kate Bush’s song – though ‘The Cramps Effect’ does sound a bit wrong! Stereogum explain more:
“This past summer, something remarkable happened. Kate Bush’s 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” appeared prominently in Stranger Things, becoming a plot point on the show, and the song suddenly became a hit among kids who weren’t born when it first came out. Thanks to Stranger Things, “Running Up That Hill” topped the UK singles chart, and it reached #3 in the US — a whole lot higher than any Kate Bush song had previously gone. Later that summer, something similar happened, on a smaller scale, with Metallica’s “Master Of Puppets.” Now, let’s all cross our fingers that another teen-oriented Netflix show will give some long-deserved shine to the Cramps.
Last week, Netflix released the first season of Wednesday, the new TV show that reboots The Addams Family as a kind of teen-detective series. Tim Burton directs four of the eight episodes. Jenna Ortega, from Ti West’s X and the most recent Scream sequel, plays Wednesday Addams, while Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in Barry Sonnenfeld’s ’90s Addams Family movies, plays a different character. Catherine Zeta-Jones is Morticia. Luis Guzmán is Gomez. The whole thing is pretty much Veronica Mars, except even more deadpan and now set at a boarding school for monster teenagers. My daughter and I mowed through the whole season over Thanksgiving, and there’s some bad CGI in there, but we had fun.
The highlight of first Wednesday season goes down at a school dance, and it has virtually nothing to do with the plot. It’s just Jenna Ortega doing a kind of face-frozen berzerker zombie frug to the Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck.” It’s got to be the best thing that Tim Burton’s directed since what? The part of Sleepy Hollow where Casper Van Dien gets murked? I’m not all caught up on recent Burton, and there’s a reason for that. But when Ortega wilds out to the Cramps, it’s like: Oh right, that guy directed Beetlejuice and Batman Returns.
Originally, “Goo Goo Muck” was an obscure 1962 single written and recorded by Ronnie Cook And The Gaylords. It belongs in the all-time canon of songs about being a horny teenage monster. The Cramps, the great rockabilly ghouls of the early New York punk scene, were always on the lookout for old songs about being horny teenage monsters. They covered “Goo Goo Muck” on their 1981 sophomore album Psychedelic Jungle, and they turned it into a classic. The Cramps were always a cult band, and they never got properly famous. They played their last live show in 2006, and frontman Lux Interior died of a sudden heart issue in 2009. They deserve to be remembered, and “Goo Goo Muck” deserves to be some kind of posthumous hit.
Thus far, I haven’t seen “Goo Goo Muck” shooting up any streaming charts. “Human Fly” and “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” remain the Cramps’ most-streamed songs by a significant margin. But Wednesday has been the #1 show on Netflix since its release, and there’s been a lot of talk about that dance scene. Jenna Ortega — who, it must be said, comes off as a total star on the show — choreographed that dance herself, and she and Burton chose “Goo Goo Muck” together. Ortega tells Vulture, “I just pulled inspiration from videos of goth kids dancing in clubs in the ’80s, Lene Lovich music videos, Siouxsie And The Banshees performances, and Fosse”.
IN THIS PHOTO: The Cramps
I don’t think The Cramps are likely to get the same sort of reaction as Kate Bush. For a start, the band are far less popular and known. The song is more obscure and less played, and Wednesday is on its first season, whereas Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) featured during the fourth season of Stranger Things. I do think that Goo Goo Muck will get The Cramps’ music new light and fans. Again, it featured in a great scene and was instrumental. Many people have never heard this track, and so they will go and see what else The Cramps have done. As I said earlier, this possible ‘Kate Bush Effect’ is not a new thing. It is simply using a sound in a soundtrack in a diegetic way. This has been happening for decades in film and T.V., though the way Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) took on a new light and even got Kate Bush herself thanking fans and blown away makes it all the more remarkable. The Cramps Goo Goo Muck might well get back into the charts and earn the band a new generation of fans. It would be cynical to think shows would use some older songs to get artists up the charts or get themselves linked to Stranger Things. Kate Bush has definitely started something. Whether she has shown that songs from the past can still connect today and have a timeless quality, or that her music in general deserves to be heard and played more, I definitely feel that other songs will blow up next year because they feature on a big T.V. show or film. I hope that The Cramps earn a bit more investigation and love after one of their songs appeared on Wednesday. There is another things that ‘The Kate Bush Effect’ has created: people asking whether old music has dominated and taken over and buried a lot of new artists. As GQ wrote, Bush’s music is not the only recipient of Generation Z and young listeners taking it to their bosoms. Platforms like TikTok have provided great awareness, access and conversation to and around legacy and older music:
“In 2022, old music was everywhere again. Kate Bush had her first number one in 44 years when 1985’s “Running Up That Hill” was featured on Stranger Things in April. The track ended up in the top five most listened to songs in the UK in Spotify Wrapped 2022. In the recent Netflix series Wednesday, ‘80s track “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps, which features in the big dance sequence in the show, has since been spun into a TikTok challenge. It’s not the only retro track to become a hit again thanks to the social media platform, with songs including Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 “Dreams” and Bill Withers’ 1980 “Just the Two of Us” trending this year. Whether on the dancefloor, radio or bar playlist, old music is the new new music.
The reasons for this shift are wide-reaching. The average age of the person streaming music has gone up, as the technology we listen to music with becomes more widely adopted. In 2018, 60% of Apple Music listeners were above 34 while on Spotify over-34s accounted for 46% of subscribers in 2021. Some of these listeners might have been waiting with bated breath for the Taylor Swift's Midnights, but a 2018 study found that we stop listening to new music around 30. Analysis of the relationship between age and music taste by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in the New York Times in the same year suggests we have a “loved it as a teenager, love it forever” rule of thumb.
This kind of music nostalgia may account for the growth of vinyl in recent years. Vinyl sales were at their highest level in 20 years in 2021, despite issues with backlogs and manufacturing delays. This is a market where rereleases dominate. Amazon’s Vinyl of the Month service, launched last year, focused on music from the ‘70s and ’80s, while nearly half of the albums currently sold by Urban Outfitters could be described as classics. Revivals of other tangible formats - cassettes, and CDs - are also on the cards, at least partially perhaps because they look cool in an Instagram upload. While nostalgia is a potent drug for those who lived through the first time these songs were released – Abba's Voyage, to coincide with their new immersive show, was the biggest selling vinyl of last year – the statistic that 15% of those aged 16-25 bought vinyl in 2021 suggests some customers are nostalgic for a time before they were born.
The TV series soundtrack, which in 2022 was heavy on nostalgic deep cuts, has a lot to answer for on this front. In addition to Kate Bush and Metallica climbing the charts thanks to Stranger Things, Euphoria turned its young viewers onto Gerry Rafferty after “Right Down the Line” was weaved into several episodes of season two this year, later trending on TikTok and amassing 150 million streams on Spotify. Euphoria – the Sam Levinson series about a group of fashionably dressed hedonistic high school students – is (aside a few backstory episodes) firmly planted in the here and now, but has boasts eclectic soundtrack featuring music from ‘80s and ’90s acts like INXS, Brandy, En Vogue and Ministry. Music Supervisor Jen Malone says this directly influences what Euphoria’s viewers are listening to. “In season one, the day after the finale aired, Donny Hathaway was trending on Twitter,” she says.
Choosing music for TV is primarily about what works for the story, but it's more than that. “It’s very much like we're making a mixtape for the younger generation,” says Malone. She compares it to the role of an older brother or sister back in the day. David Mogendorff, the Head of UK music operations at TikTok, sees it as a step up from that. “To get deep [into music] was much more limited,” he recalls. “Now the full catalogue is there. I've got a 20 year old nephew, who's become an expert on jazz from American jazz at the '50s. There's no stigma of old music – everything is new music.”
Nearly 48% of TikTok users are between 10 and 29, and the app, and its sound library, has its own part to play in this trend. Mogendorff says its not just household names like Fleetwood Mac. He points to Life Without Buildings, a ‘00s indie band whose song “The Leanover” is popular on the app. “Most people I know have never heard of them, and suddenly out of nowhere, this whole new generation is using multiple songs and going, ‘Oh, my God, I love this band.’”
Even if you were too young to remember, say, 1978’s “Rasputin” by Boney M (another biggie on TikTok), the familiarity of a nearly 50-year-old hit is strangely comforting. It can also be revitalising – something like Talking Heads “This Must be The Place”, as heard in Industry earlier this year, sounds completely different to when your dad played it in the car all those years ago. Brian d’Souza, the founder of playlist company Open Ear (who create playlists for restaurants, bars and shops), thinks the pandemic has a part to play in these songs becoming popular again. “When businesses came back, clients would often want stuff we all recognise to get customers to leave the house,” he says. “Whether it was a shop, restaurant, bar, they wanted back-to-back winners.”
With the dominance of older music there are some losers – namely, new musicians, and d’Souza himself is somewhat mystified by this trend. “I’m less interested what's happened in the past, he says. “I personally like to buy new music.” This may, theoretically at least, become harder. With catalogue music becoming increasingly popular, record companies’ attention could become focused on guaranteed classics rather than looking for fresh talent. “The big music companies don’t want to take risks, and the safest bet is to stick with proven artists and familiar songs,” says journalist Ted Gioia, who dedicated a dispatch of his popular Substack to this subject. “As a result, they invest more in buying up rights to old song than developing the next generation of artists. This can't be healthy for our culture”.
I will end things there. There is a lot to discuss when it comes to Kate Bush and her ‘effect’ this year. Definitely, she has shown that songs first released decades ago can have such an impact all this time later. Not that Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was ever obscure, but it has certainly had this revival and new injection of life and purpose. Because of Netflix’s Wednesday, perhaps The Cramps will be the latest artists to get a similar boost. Who knows. It just goes to show that, even in 2022, Kate Bush’s incredible music is as influential and important…
AS it has ever been.