The series “The Last of Us” returned the 76-year-old singer to the charts

The second life of old hits

The third episode of The Last of Us received far fewer enthusiastic responses than the previous two, but it also received musical resonance. The song “Long Long Time” by American singer Linda Ronstadt, featured in the series, again became a hit, although it was originally released fifty-three years ago. And this track is not the only retro hit that got a second life thanks to TV shows.

Long Long Time in the series sounds both in the version of Linda Ronstadt herself and in the performance of one of the heroes of the show. The old hit fit perfectly into the dramatic story of lovers who together decided to commit suicide due to an incurable illness of one of them. The likelihood that viewers of a series based on a computer game knew the country hit of the seventies well, frankly, is small. Most likely, once again, a great combination of music and cinema played, and as a result, streaming service Spotify alone saw a 4,900 percent increase in streams after the episode was released.

Linda Ronstadt has many impressive achievements in her career. In the seventies, the American singer was called the queen of country rock, and after the death of Janis Joplin, she became one of the brightest women on the rock scene of that time. Linda has sold a huge number of records, occupied the top lines of the world charts, received eleven Grammy awards and entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Now the singer is 76 years old and since 2013 she has not performed due to progressive Parkinson’s disease. A new surge of excitement around her person, probably, looks like a miracle, which, however, has a completely intelligible explanation.

With the rise of streaming, the collection of music statistics has largely changed. Classic charts are based on the number of copies sold or on the frequency of songs on different airwaves. In a civilized music industry, these charts are focused more on new items, so the compilers of the charts try not to keep old songs in the tables. For the sake of this, a special accounting algorithm was created, thanks to which the statistics of the track begins to be underestimated after nine weeks of its stay in the hit parade. It is thanks to this system of counting that big hits do not stay on the charts for years, although they continue to be played on the radio and actively bought.

In streaming, the rules of the game are virtually devoid of any conventions. By purchasing a subscription, music lovers receive a huge library and can use it at their discretion. Thus, in the charts compiled by digital platforms, both hot hits and songs released in the last century can get into the Top-20. Movies and TV shows have always fueled the public’s interest in the music that sounds in the pictures, but earlier, in order to listen to a song from a movie around which passions boil, one had to either buy a soundtrack or find an album with this composition. Now it is enough to activate the mobile application, and thanks to such simple access to almost any music, already played songs have a chance for a second life.

Sometimes such success is somewhat reminiscent of a conspiracy, as in the case of British singer Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill. Released in 1985, the song was featured in the fourth season of Stranger Things, a series set in the 1980s. One of the heroines of the show often listens to this track, trying to drown out the pain of losing a loved one with the help of music. Apparently, such circumstances touched the audience so much that the song, clearly not designed for a modern audience, conquered not only the streaming charts, but also those charts where retro is not welcome.

This also happened thanks to the rules, which seem to prevent the long-term popularity of old songs, but are distinguished by a flexible approach. Representatives of any artist can ask to turn off the statistics reduction algorithm for the track of their ward, provided that this song is not in a hundred hits. This is exactly what happened with Running Up That Hill, and as a result, 38 years after the release, the song has risen in the charts higher than when it first appeared on the music market.

A pleasant surprise happened with the composition of Russian origin. Last year, the track of the St. Petersburg group Jane Air got into the American TV series “The Boys”. The song Junk was released in 2004 and for some time was almost the main hit of the group. According to the plot of one of the episodes of the series, the heroes go in search of super-weapons to Russia, and apparently the compilers of the soundtrack chose a lively song of our rockers for these scenes. The popularity of “The Boys” provoked huge interest in the track in a language incomprehensible to most of the audience, and the song hit the first place on the TuneFind chart, which contains the most listened to music from the series.

It is noteworthy that at this time in the life of Jane Air there was a relative calm, and the band’s frontman Anton Lissov toured with Little Big. Now all members of Jane Air have returned to their project and recently released a new album. It can be assumed that the second serial life of their hit Junk also played a role in the reboot of the band.