CNN
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Linda Ronstadt’s “Long, Long Time” has appeared not once, but three times Sunday’s episode of “The Last of Us.” And fans of HBO’s latest hit are clearly taken aback by Ronstadt’s song, as streams of her song have ballooned since the episode premiered.
Between 11 p.m. ET and midnight Sunday, Spotify streams of “Long, Long Time” increased 4,900% over the previous week, the platform says. mentioned this week. CNN has reached out to Spotify to confirm the number of streams before and after “The Last of Us” airs. Meanwhile, the song is already on appear on TikToks Crying viewers who I love the episode.
Actors Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman performed the song in a movie The pivotal sequence in the third episode About “The Last of Us” in which their characters meet by chance, take turns playing a Ronstadt song at a very different tempo on an antique piano and share a kiss (and ultimately, nearly 20 years of their lives). The episode ends with Ronstadt’s rendition of the song, which was played on a cassette tape.
“I knew the song had to hit certain things about longing and pain and unrequited love,” series co-creator Craig Mazin Tell variety.
Ronstadt released “Long, Long Time” in 1970 as a single from her second studio album, Silk Purse. It charted for 12 weeks, peaking at number 25, per painting. It was her first single to appear on the Billboard chart.
Renewed interest in Ronstadt’s song is Graphic comparisons to the overwhelming wave of popularity that “Running on the Hill (Deal with God)” received when Kate Bush’s power ballad was featured in Several episodes of “Stranger Things” last year. Nearly 40 years after it was first released, Bush’s signature song is back on the charts, and hit No. 1 in the UK And No. 4 in the United States. Billboard reported that in 1985, the song had peaked at No. 30. Around the time the fourth season of “Stranger Things” was released in late May, “Running Up That Hill” began charting. Net millions of streams day.
The uber-popular series, especially the one with huge Gen Z viewership, has shown a unique power to bring some songs to life, especially on TikTok. “Euphoria” introduced young viewers to the 1970s musical “Right Down the Line” by Jerry Rafferty, Zendaya’s character Rowe grooves more than once in the series’ second season. It also resonated with millions of people on TikTok: the hashtag # Right down the line Over 5 million views on the app, and over 34,000 videos use The official version of the song as an audio snippet. (HBO, home of “The Last of Us” and “Euphoria,” shares parent company Warner Bros. Discovery with CNN.)
Netflix’s huge hit “Wednesday,” which Break viewing records Previously reserved for “Stranger Things,” it featured a viral scene set to The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” in which the titular Addams family daughter performs a special dance to the punk anthem. Netflix section The scene garnered over 43 million views and Google searches for the song Rose in early December, shortly after the streaming show was launched. But the scene also revived, indirectly, Lady Gaga’s song “Bloody Mary” from her 2011 album “Born This Way”. Millions of TikTok users are eager to Recreate the “Wednesday” dance He traced their attempts at Gaga’s deep, tender cut, which The song rocketed to the Billboard charts for the first time (although it was Gaga’s No. 36 entry on the Billboard Hot 100).
Meanwhile, Ronstadt’s song wasn’t the first song featured on “The Last of Us” to pique fans’ interest. The pilot episode ended with Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” which tripled overnight from 26,000 the day the pilot aired to 83,000 the next, according to painting. Depeche Mode’s official YouTube account even added a basic code for a file address Song Music Video: “(heard in episode 1 of The Last of Us).”
So far, few oldies-turned-new songs have reached the same heights as Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” last year, but “The Last of Us” shows that their success hasn’t been an anomaly.