A song can sit quietly in the catalog for thirty or forty years and then, almost overnight, show up beside this week’s biggest hits. It usually takes a push from outside, such as a TV scene, a cover version or a holiday that comes round every year.
These five songs from the 1980s all found new audiences long after their first run. Each one came back through a different route, and the chart numbers show how big the revivals were.
Kate Bush, Running Up That Hill (1985)
When Kate Bush’s single first came out, it peaked at No. 3 in the UK in 1985. In the United States, it reached No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100. Nobody would have called it unfinished business, but a Netflix series had other ideas.
The fourth season of Stranger Things used the song heavily after its first volume arrived on May 27, 2022. It overtook Harry Styles to claim a UK No. 1, her first since Wuthering Heights 44 years earlier. In America, it landed at No. 8 on the Hot 100, Bush’s first Top 10 appearance, and Music Week noted it had climbed to No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 1 on the Global 200 by the time it topped the UK chart.
Metallica, Master of Puppets (1986)
Metallica’s title track from their third album is more than eight minutes long, which is not the usual recipe for a singles chart entry. Yet the 1986 song entered the Hot 100 for the first time ever after the Stranger Things season four finale. It debuted at No. 40 for the week of July 16, 2022.
The scene that did it showed the character Eddie Munson playing the song on guitar. Reports said it had gathered 17.5 million streams in the week after the final episodes aired on July 1. The UK followed along too, where it first appeared on the Official Singles Chart at No. 47.
Tracy Chapman, Fast Car (1988)
This one came back by a roundabout path. In 2023, country star Luke Combs released a faithful cover, and his version eclipsed the original on the Hot 100, peaking at No. 2. Chapman’s own recording had reached No. 6 on the Hot 100 during 1988.
Then came the 2024 Grammy Awards, where Chapman made a rare public appearance and sang the song as a duet with Combs. A week later, her original returned to the Hot 100 at No. 42. It also earned 35,000 digital downloads, which put it at the top of the Digital Song Sales chart for the first time. The song had last appeared on the Hot 100 back in October 1988.
Wham!, Last Christmas (1984)
Wham!’s holiday single has a long history of near misses. On its first release in 1984, it spent five weeks at No. 2 in the UK, held off the top by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? For decades it carried the label of the highest selling UK single never to reach number one.
That changed in stages. It reached number one for the first time on New Year’s Day 2021, and became Christmas number one in 2023. In 2024, it became the first song to hold the Christmas number one spot in two consecutive years. By mid December 2024, Billboard reported that it was at No. 1 for an eighth non consecutive week in just four years.
Journey, Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) (1983)
Journey’s synth heavy rock single from 1983 had a quieter revival than the others, but it still showed up on the charts. The song got a lift from the same Stranger Things season four wave that helped Bush and Metallica. According to a newsletter that tracked the rock charts, two different versions of Separate Ways were on the Rock Charts at once.
The two versions came from two separate placements. One was a remix in the season four trailer, and the other was its use in the eighth episode, which hit Netflix on July 1. The show is set in the late 1980s, so the soundtrack leaned on songs from that era, and that gave this one a second life with listeners who weren’t around in 1983.
