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Kate Bush Running up that hill

Bingoman

Bingoman

Well-Known Member
What is everyone thoughts of the song being Number 1 37 years after it reached number 3 first time around in the charts thanks to TV Show Stranger Things ?

Could we see other classics song re entering charts I'm not talking about the Christmas song or 3 lions as they re enter every year or 4 years respectively?

Would you like to see classic hits make a comeback or just leave them as just one offs?
 
It’s her best song, so its all fine with me that it’s suddenly number 1 rather than the latest mediocre rubbish.

But it’s not like it’s the first time something has re-entered the charts and hit number 1 because of TV. Remember The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” only got to number one 10 years after it was released because of a Levi’s advert. There was also “Young At Heart” by the Bluebells also took almost 10 years too thanks to a VW advert. You can practically see the charts were riddled with re-releases if anyone watches the reruns of Top Of The Pops from the 90s on BBC4. The only difference now is record labels don’t have to actually ‘re-release’ anything - it’s just a measure of popularity based on streams these days. I doubt many people under 30 really understand or care about the concept of ‘the charts’ as we knew them and the fact it becomes this big news story is more a reflection on the age of the people who run the media than anything else.
 
Generally not. But i'll make an exception for this song.

I had a long drunken conversation with a muso friend last night, and one of the things that's amazing about it, is that when you look at the year it was recorded - 1985 - it doesn't sound dated. There was so much stuff around then that was a victim to the technology of the time.. and just sounds naff.
 
Surely it would be a bit weird to have a negative opinion about a song becoming popular again, if you’d previously had a positive opinion about it being popular. Typical Boomerism - housing, pension wealth, the songs too, all for them and not for Gen Z.
 
I was a fan of Kate Bush back in the day and possessed the Hounds of Love album in vinyl that this song was a track on.

I think Kate's music is timeless and sounds just as fresh today as it did then, and there are few artists of any era about which that can be said.

I am glad to see this song back in the charts. Of course for my age group there is an element of nostalgia involved, but many younger people might well have been new to this music.
 
If the kids love this song, wait until they getta load of Wuthering Heights, or Cloudbusting, or This Woman's Work, or Hounds of Love etc

I read she's currently making £250k a week from Running up that Hill from streaming, sales, licencing and airplay, so good for her
 
D'wards said:
If the kids love this song, wait until they getta load of Wuthering Heights, or Cloudbusting, or This Woman's Work, or Hounds of Love etc

I read she's currently making £250k a week from Running up that Hill from streaming, sales, licencing and airplay, so good for her
Click to expand...
Wuthering heights is at number 34 on the UK download chart:eek:
 
Old tracks have been entering the top 40 randomly now for several years since the introduction of weekly streams from the likes of Spotify and YouTube et Al.

No surprise as music today is so pish.

Fleetwood mac - dreams got to 18 a year and a bit ago due to it taking off on TikTok for example. Higher than when it originally released.

But no one pays attention to the charts anymore and the only reason we know about this one is probably because people read an article elsewhere. Otherwise would you even know it was number 1.
 
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cybershot said:
Old tracks have been entering the top 40 randomly now for several years since the introduction of weekly streams from the likes of Spotify and YouTube et Al.

No surprise as music today is so pish.

Fleetwood mac - dreams got to 18 a year and a bit ago due to it taking off on TikTok for example. Higher than when it originally released.

But no one pays attention to the charts anymore and the only reason we know about this one is probably because people read an article elsewhere. Otherwise would you even know it was number 1.
Click to expand...

Is music today pish, though?

Isn't it just that the urban demographic can't entirely relate to new stuff, or keep track of it?

Of course, there's always going to be fodder, filler and disposable pop but there's also a lot of "good" stuff out there.
 
cybershot said:
But no one pays attention to the charts anymore and the only reason we know about this one is probably because people read an article elsewhere. Otherwise would you even know it was number 1.
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To be honest no. I pay zero attention to the charts anymore. But even when I did the charts were a young person's thing. People my current age rarely showed any interest.
So nothing new there. Unless young people are paying no attention to the charts as well.
 
cybershot said:
No surprise as music today is so pish
Click to expand...
Its not because music today is so pish, its because streaming has radically changed the way charts are measured. What they record now aren't just people discovering and listening to a song for the first time, but everyone listening to a song - so where in the past, people who already had a copy of running up that hill listening to it would go unrecorded as they would be just sticking a record on, now they are recorded and their listens go towards the chart.

Streaming is disastrous for new music tbh - its totally changed the focus of the music industry so there's less and less investment in new artists each year. That's probably why people get the impression new music is 'pish'
 
donkyboy said:
Yung'uns discovering an artist and her beautiful music that they never heard about. Can't be against that.
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Hilariously, some people are really cross about it. Some kids think it’s from Stranger Things and had never heard of Kate Bush before. As if it’s at all new for the current generation to discover something from the previous generations and think it’s new.
 
8ball said:
I didn’t realise the charts were still a thing, but if they do it’s encouraging that a good song is at the top of it.
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It's all agorithmic these days. Doesn't depend on people actually buying music. Kate Bush is top because they suddenly changed a rule which penalised old songs, and they did that so there'd be a, 'this thing is top of the charts' story to remind people that charts exist.
 
killer b said:
Its not because music today is so pish, its because streaming has radically changed the way charts are measured. What they record now aren't just people discovering and listening to a song for the first time, but everyone listening to a song - so where in the past, people who already had a copy of running up that hill listening to it would go unrecorded as they would be just sticking a record on, now they are recorded and their listens go towards the chart.

Streaming is disastrous for new music tbh - its totally changed the focus of the music industry so there's less and less investment in new artists each year. That's probably why people get the impression new music is 'pish'
Click to expand...
Plusses and minusses.

Because on the plus side is the fact that we are no longer in thrall to the music industry dictating what should be currently in the charts, assisted by their hirelings in radio. Nor is the charts solely determined anymore by singles record sales as it used to be.

Streaming charts is a far more accurate assessment of what is currently popular than singles record sales.

Back in the day, by the late 80s music hit something of a nadir because the only ones buying singles were mostly young teenage kids. We ended up with Stock, Aitken, and Waterman producing manufactured crap that all sounded the same simply by persuading young teenage girls to buy into the images being sold to them. Most adults had given up buying singles in preference to albums and thus their tastes were wholly unrecorded in the charts. S,A, and W measured success purely in terms of commercial sales and were openly contemptuous of anyone talking about musical quality. The Thatcherites of music.

By the late 80s the disconnect between the charts and what most people actually liked to listen to had become most marked. The rise of streaming and decline of record sales has changed all that for the better.
 
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srb7677 said:
Because on the plus side is the fact that we are no longer in thrall to the music industry dictating what should be currently in the charts, assisted by their hirelings in radio. Nor is the charts solely determined anymore by singles record sales as it used to be.
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Were now in thrall to the streaming companies opaque algorithms instead, I'm not sure that's an improvement if I'm honest
 
killer b said:
Were now in thrall to the streaming companies opaque algorithms instead, I'm not sure that's an improvement if I'm honest
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Well at least it more accurately reflects what people are actually listening to and as such is a more accurate measure of current musical popularity.

Back in the day the charts were based entirely upon singles sales and thus ignored utterly broad swathes of listening, and the gatekeepers to what got played on the radio were DJs often in the pockets of the record companies.

Today, music radio itself is much more diverse, and streaming far more accessible than singles purchases, even if only in terms of cost.
 
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