That sync-ing feeling

Nigel Williamson worries about the way songs that are used in movies and TV shows is starting to clutter up the charts with oldies

- Nigel Williamson

The whole world has gone mad", Kate Bush said recently in a rare interview on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour. She was talking about the 'sync' licence and accompanying retro-mania which catapulted her 1985 hit Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) back to the top of the charts after the song was used by Netflix's sci-fi drama Stranger Things.

Bush's renewed success has broken at least three records - the longest time between release and a song reaching number one; the oldest female songwriter to reach the top spot; and the longest ever gap between number ones - 44 years since Wuthering Heights gave Bush her only previous chart-topper in 1978.

Since then another sync from the same Netflix drama has also taken Metallica's 1986 Master Of Puppets back into the charts, some 36 years after it was first released.

The chart success of these old songs shows how syncs in TV shows and their dissemination via platforms such as TikTok are introducing music to a new audience that wasn't even born when it was first released. Bush admitted that a lot of the young fans into Running Up That Hill had not only never heard it, but didn't know who she was.