You know I’m always noticing the music they use in ads (and how one of the unexpected benefits of getting older is that so much of it is tunes from my youth). So it wasn’t surprising that I did a double-take when this new spot for Olay Regenerist Luminous came on this evening:
I couldn’t believe it: Kate Bush, famously publicity-shy and mostly removed from the scene for the past 10+ years, was selling her tracks to global consumer brands? Because I was pretty sure the soundtrack was ‘Running Up That Hill’:
But no – it’s a soundalike. Still, I’m 100% certain that the brief for the music in this spot was “‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush – or, like, just make it sound exactly like that, but without us having to pay royalties or track down her agent.”
[I notice, BTW, that there was a 2012 remix of ‘Running Up That Hill’. I am not certain why this happened. All I know is that the last time I heard anything about Kate Bush, she was baking a pie for some feature in a British newspaper. Not certain why that happened, either.]