The ‘Stranger Things’ Effect: How Needle Drops Can Catapult Classic Songs
variety.comJazz Tangcay Artisans EditorA year ago, as Emmy voters were considering potential contenders for outstanding music supervision, would any of them have guessed that Kate Bush would enter the top 10 of U.S.
song consumption? Or that Metallica would see a resurgence based on a key synch? But such is the power of the soundtrack to Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” which can catapult a song from a few thousand streams to hundreds of millions.Credit music supervisor Nora Felder for identifying and clearing the placements for use in season 4.
Bush’s story is particularly impressive. The reclusive singer saw her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” receive a more than 22,000% surge since the week the series dropped and has since gone on to become one of 30 most-streamed songs of 2022.
To date, it has clocked nearly 600 million streams on Spotify alone. Emmy-nominated Felder says the show’s executive producers Matt and Ross Duffer — better known as the Duffer brothers — sought a song that resonated with the intense, wide-ranging emotional experiences Max (Sadie Sink) was undergoing.
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