The 'Stranger Things' Effect: How Needle Drops Can Catapult Classic Songs

A year ago, when Emmy voters were considering potential nominees for Outstanding Music Supervision, would any of them have guessed that Kate Bush would enter the top 10 of consumption of songs in the United States? Or who would see a resurgence based on a key synch? But such is the power of Netflix's "Stranger Things" soundtrack, which can catapult a song from a few thousand streams to hundreds of millions.

Thanks to Music Supervisor Nora Felder for identifying and clearing locations for use in Season 4. Bush's story is particularly impressive. The reclusive singer saw her 1985 song "Running Up That Hill" receive an increase of more than 22,000% since the week the series dropped and has since become one of the 30 most streamed songs of 2022. At this day, she has logged nearly 600 million streams on Spotify alone.

Emmy-nominated Felder said the show's executive producers Matt and Ross Duffer, better known as the Duffer Brothers, were looking for a song that resonated with the intense emotional experiences and varied that Max (Sadie Sink) was going through. According to Felder, "It immediately struck me with its deep chords about the possible connection to Max's emotional struggles and took on greater significance as Bush's song sank into my consciousness."

Clearing the sync was Felder's next task. Bush is selective when it comes to using her songs. So Felder made sure to get script pages and footage for Bush to review so the singer could see exactly how the scene - and the song - would play out.

It might not be a coincidence that Metallica's "Master of Puppets" also came out less than a year after Bush's "Running Up That Hill." He also benefited from Felder's needle drop. In the season finale, Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) performs the song in Upside Down with the rest of Hawkins' team and promises to take on the evil Vecna. Felder says the song was incorporated into the script during pre-production.

"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", music supervisor Robin Urdang researched needle drops suitable for her period. Because when Rachel Brosnahan's Midge goes to a lesbian bar, Urdang wanted to avoid “a typical, well-known lesbian song. We wanted something underground, and nobody knew that. I was looking and looking for the property. The song she used ("I'm Nobody's Baby" by Miss Beverly Shaw) may be destined to remain a cult hit, having amassed just 5,000 streams, according to data from Luminate.

The original songs are less predictable, but the hugely influential "Euphoria" is about the best possible musical launchpad. Zendaya and Labrinth's "All for Us" has had over 300 million streams since its first drop in 2019.

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