With the amount of music out there today, it’s astounding that anyone gets a look in on streaming services, users often overwhelmed by choice.
More astounding then is that an artist – who’s been making music since before streaming services and even CDs – will be joining the ‘BILLIONS CLUB’ on Spotify, a playlist of songs with an exceeding a billion streams, usually reserved for the highest rotation pop and major label releases.
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Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is expected to join the club imminently, with its streams steadily powering towards 999.8 million streams. Following the success of the song in 2022’s Stranger Things, the song has amassed a massive cult following, while earning a pretty penny in royalties for Bush as the sole songwriter and producer.
Written with the help of engineer Derek Peter “Del” Palmer, the song was created using basic loops with a LinnDrum drum machine and an (Australian!) Fairlight CMI synthesiser, both highly valuable and revered pieces of kit in the modern day. From here, the vocal was woven into the music and the rest is history. The final version of the song was an augmented version of this demo, with extra layers, and particular focus on getting the Fairlight sounds right. The signature, droney ambience was created with a Quantec digital reverb, with a small chord being ‘frozen’ and processing it with the Quantec. Some additional drums and percussion complimented the LinnDrum rhythms as well. The song was released in 1985 on the album “Hounds of Love”.
Bush will join artists such as Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, OneRepublic, Ed Sheeran and Billie Eilish in the playlist, as well as a slew of other artists, collaborators and stars.
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