Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” reaches No. 1 on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart, leaping 6-1 on the ranking dated June 18.
In the June 3-9 tracking week, “Hill” earned 29 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
It’s Bush’s first Streaming Songs No. 1, coming in her first appearance on the list, which began in 2013. The song debuted at No. 6 on the June 11 chart (17.5 million streams) following its sync in the fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, which premiered June 3.
“Hill” becomes the first song aided by scripted media such as TV or film to reach No. 1 on Streaming Songs since the 13-week reign of Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” earlier this year. Before then, Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower,” from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, spent three nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1, two in January 2019, and again for a week in April 2019.
But unlike the above, “Hill” wasn’t explicitly written for the media in which it was featured, instead originating in 1985 as part of Bush’s album from the same year, Hounds of Love. Its closest companion, then, might be Soko’s “We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow,” a 2014 No. 1 that surged after being used in the three-minute viral film First Kiss on YouTube; “Tomorrow” was initially released in 2012. And no song from the 1980s and before had ever reached No. 1 (one did so from the ‘90s: Mariah Carey’s perennial holiday favorite “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” a 15-week No. 1 spread out between 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022), making “Hill” the oldest song to hit No. 1 since its inception.
“Hill” isn’t the only song released in the ‘80s to reach Streaming Songs’ top 10, though. Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” peaked at No. 5 in late 2013, the four-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 (1987) boosted by a viral video on YouTube. Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” appeared at No. 2 for a week in June 2014, also due to attention from a viral clip online.
“Hill” is the first song to rise to its first week at No. 1 on Streaming Songs rather than debut there since “Bruno,” which also climbed to the top in its second week (Jan. 15), in its case after debuting at No. 35 Jan. 8. Each of the No. 1s between then – Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” Jack Harlow’s “First Class,” Future’s “Wait for U,” featuring Drake and Tems, and Kendrick Lamar’s “N95,” all started their runs at No. 1, many also returning to the top in subsequent weeks.
As previously reported, “Hill” concurrently reaches No. 1 on the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Hot Alternative Songs charts, and it jumps 8-4 on the all-format Hot 100.
