"Running Up That Hill" and into a Cold War?

Western pop culture died in the 2000s, and online streaming killed it. It was a slow mostly unacknowledged death, sort of like an unfortunate elderly person that had been sent to live out their days in a retirement home. Those of us who came of age in the 90s and 2000s are the last to have grown up with "can't miss TV" and top 100 songs that the majority of people could actually recognize. Once this generation dies, the idea of pop culture will too (unless everyone is forced to listen to the same music in the metaverse).

While it's possible that I just have trashy tastes, one could contend that Tiger King and WAP - and the not trashy Stranger Things - are a few of the only original pieces of media in the past three years that have elicited any sort of wide scale meme worthy acceptance, outside of Marvel movies. With the majority of music available instantaneously at our finger tips, the idea of a song gaining mainstream popularity feels like an antiquated idea, which is why I suppose it makes sense that one of the biggest songs right now is actually thirty-seven years old.

First released in 1985, Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)'s glassy vocals and confident yet restrained background rhythm feels perfectly reflective of 2022. Although it was featured in Netflix's Stranger Things, the show alone can't be credited for the explosion of this song. Stranger Things has also included classics by Metallica and KISS, but those bands haven't made a resurgence the way that Kate Bush has. This isn't a matter of a song being released before it's time either - I would argue that it is because of the similarities between 1985 and 2022. 1985 is now assumed to be when the Cold War entered its final stages final stages; it was a time of global uncertainty and unease.

Strauss–Howe generational theory is about the idea that there are recurring generational cycles in American and Western history. The theory is that humanity will never really learn from our mistakes and major social events will always repeat because of the way that each generation influences each other. While some say we are entering a new Cold War, to anyone that has been following politics and global trends, it feels more like we are approaching the end of something. It is as if all of the countries have put their cards on the table and we are waiting to see who wins.

With policymakers openly discussing threats of nuclear extinction, possible political upheaval in a certain behemoth country, and well, the way that every idiotic tweet that gets discussed in the walking-dead mainstream media, it is difficult to not be pessimistic. To me, that is why the beautiful yet fragile sound of Kate Bush's vocals sounds so of the moment. The world is on a prepuce of something major, just as it was in the late eighties, and yet we will all keep isolating ourselves in our bubbles of niche media, telling ourselves that every problem we face is because of the older or younger generation; we'll keep "running up that hill" all the while the world cycles through yet another upheaval. I just hope that one day in the future we are all happily humming along to a genuinely new song and not chanting along to Baby One More Time in caves.