Kate Bushs Running Up That Hill — Split image of Max Mayfield with white eyes wearing headphones next to Kate Bush portrait, captioned 'Boomers upon hearing

Kate Bushs Running Up That Hill

2022viral soundclassic

Published August 8, 2026

Kate Bush's 1985 single 'Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)' returned as a viral sound in mid-2022 after Stranger Things Season 4 made it the character Max's favorite song. TikTok and Twitter turned the track into meme audio, generational jokes, and remix material almost overnight.

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Overview

Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)' is a 1985 synth-pop track that got a full second life in mid-2022 as a meme sound and generational reference1. The song attached itself to a specific scene in Stranger Things Season 4 where the character Max is saved from the villain Vecna by listening to her favorite song through headphones, and that scene became the format people parodied everywhere2.

The meme itself works in two main flavors. One is direct scene parody, usually a TikTok where someone acts out being rescued from a supernatural fate by whatever audio their friends stick in their ears3. The other is a running Twitter joke about Boomers, Gen Z, and the strange spectacle of a nearly 40-year-old Kate Bush track sitting at number one on iTunes in the same week Top Gun: Maverick opened4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Netflix (source scene) / TikTok and Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Kate Bush / Stranger Things Season 4
Date
2022

The song was released as the lead single from Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love on August 5th, 1985, and its music video was uploaded to YouTube on January 15th, 20113. Its meme era started on May 27th, 2022, when Netflix dropped the first seven episodes of Stranger Things Season 4 and revealed that 'Running Up That Hill' was Max's favorite song and the emotional anchor of a key rescue scene2.

A clip of that moment, titled 'Max's Favourite Song,' was posted to YouTube by Still Watching Netflix on May 30th, 2022, and pulled in roughly 4.4 million views in under two weeks, giving the meme its central visual reference3.

How It Spread

Within days of the season premiere the song was number one on the iTunes chart and hitting the top ten in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand for the first time1. Spotify streams of the track jumped 153 percent, and on June 9th, 2022 it became the most-searched song on Genius1.

On TikTok the meme took off through scene parodies. On May 29th, 2022, TikToker @dantelij2 posted a version where a Spotify ad plays instead of the song during the rescue, racking up around 9.4 million plays5. Two days later, TikToker @baconwithsyruppp did the same bit with AirPods dying mid-rescue and pulled roughly 11.2 million plays6. A drill remix by @cswiff_music2 landed on June 3rd, 2022, and by June 9th, 2022, TikToker @adaamara had a meta joke about the sound's overuse that hit 2.9 million plays in a single day7.

Twitter carried the generational side. On May 31st, 2022, @iMattClarke tied the Kate Bush revival to Top Gun: Maverick and the war in Ukraine as evidence that everyone had collectively decided to redo 19868. On June 3rd, 2022, @cloudbusting posted an American Psycho edit of Patrick Bateman holding a Kate Bush CD, which earned around 15,000 likes9.

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TikTok

How to Use This Meme

The template typically borrows the Stranger Things rescue setup: someone is in mortal or emotional danger, a friend jams headphones on them, and the punchline is whatever audio comes out instead of Kate Bush. Common variants swap in Spotify ads, dying AirPods, or an unrelated song. On Twitter the format is usually text-only, pairing the song's chart resurgence with other 80s callbacks to joke that culture is running the decade back.

Frequently Asked Questions