Kate Bush set to beat Harry Styles in UK No 1 chart race after rule change

‘Running Up That Hill’ is currently the most-streamed song in the UK

Kate Bush is on track for a No 1 single in the charts after a recent change to streaming rules.

Since featuring in the latest season of Stranger Things, Bush’s 1985 track “Running Up That Hill” has received renewed attention across the world.

When it was originally released, the song reached a peak position of No 3 in the UK charts.

At the time of writing, “Running Up That Hill” was the UK’s most-streamed song, receiving an average of 700,000 plays per day on Spotify.

Until recently, those streams would have counted as 3,500 sales, rather than 7,000 sales, as older songs were capped to give newer entries a better chance of success.

This means that although Bush’s song was streamed more times than Harry Styles’s “As It Was” last week, the former One Direction star’s more recent song claimed the top spot.

However, a decision made by the Chart Supervisory Committee is likely to change this scenario. Over the weekend, the committee revoked the “accelerated decline” rule that prevents streams of old songs having the same impact as those released more recently, Official Charts reports.

Kate Bush has expressed her delight at the resurgence in popularity of her song Running Up That Hill (William Conran/PA) (PA Archive)

As of Monday (13 June), “Running Up That Hill” was 5,000 streams ahead of Styles’s single, and will now be counted as such.

It is expected to maintain this lead throughout the week, which would give Bush her second UK No 1 single when the charts are announced on Friday.

The Kent-born singer-songwriter topped the charts for the first time in 1978 with “Wuthering Heights”.

Bush, though infamously private, has commented on the renewed appreciation for her song, first thanking fans for their support, before commending the producers of Stranger Things for their use of the track.