Our Flag Means Death Joins Stranger Things In Bringing Back A Kate Bush Classic
This article contains spoilers for "Our Flag Means Death" season 2.
It's tough out there for pirates these days, especially if you're Taika Waititi's Ed Teach, aka Blackbeard, who's been on a bit of a downward spiral ever since Stede (Rhys Darby) stood him up towards the end of season 1. None of us love rejection, but Blackbeard takes things harder than most; he exiles most of Stede's crew and steals his ship, then spends the first few episodes of season 2 on a reckless streak of violence that ends in his crew doing a mutiny. They nearly kill him in the process, and as we see Blackbeard metaphorically being tied to a giant rock and getting dragged to the bottom of the ocean, it seems like this might be the end for him.
Luckily, back in Blackbeard's real life, Stede walks in and starts begging his unconscious body not to die, promising to never leave him ever again. Part of Blackbeard can still hear him, and this is what motivates him to stop accepting death and start struggling back towards the surface.
Even luckier for Blackbeard is the presence of Kate Bush's '80s classic, "This Woman's Work," playing in the background. If we learned anything from "Stranger Things" last year, it's that if you ever need to motivate a depressed friend to fight their way out of a nightmare world symbolizing their descent into a death of despair, a Kate Bush song is exactly what the doctor ordered.
The many Stranger Things parallels
"I know you've got a little life in you left/I know you've got a lotta strength left," are the repeating lyrics the show focuses on as Blackbeard's hand starts moving in the waking world, just as "Come on baby, come on darling," repeat when Max in "Stranger Things" starts mustering the strength to escape from Vecna's world. Both songs work almost as pleas from the audience themselves, ones the character seems able to listen to. (Literally, in Max's case.) Most notably, both songs in these shows are accompanied by heart-warming flashbacks to good moments in the main character's life — memories that help them rediscover their willingness to return to the world of the living.
As "Our Flag Means Death" creator David Jenkins explained in an Entertainment Weekly feature on the making of the mermaid scene, "This Woman's Work" was always the song he intended for it, but he got a little pushback from music supervisor Maggie Phillips. After all, the song had already been used in "She's Having a Baby" (for which it was written), "Extras," "Love and Basketball," "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," "The Handmaid's Tale" ... the list goes on. As The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" has shown, sometimes a song can be used as a needle-drop in too many TV shows and movies, to the point where it's robbed of the impact it once had.
And then of course there was Kate Bush's return to prominence thanks to "Stranger Things," which made "This Woman's Work" feel even more obvious as a song choice, bordering on cliché. "Ultimately, my feeling is that whenever Kate Bush gets exposed to new audiences, that's great," Phillips explained. "But I was fully like, 'Don't use this song. There's too much baggage' ... And then I saw a cut of [the scene], and I ate my words."
Will 'This Woman's Work' receive a similar boost?
After "Stranger Things" season 4 came out, "Running Up That Hill" immediately experienced a massive bump in listenership, as many of the show's younger fans discovered Kate Bush for the first time. The official music video for the song currently has 223 million views; it was only at 48 million in the days before the season aired. The music video for "This Woman's Work," meanwhile, is only at 5.8 million as of October 7, 2023, and it'll be interesting to see how that number changes going forward.
It wouldn't be the first time this year that an old song came back into prominence thanks to its use in a pop culture phenomenon. "Barbie" recently brought Matchbox Twenty's "Push" back into the limelight by featuring it as the Kens' favorite song (there's even a cover version by Ryan Gosling on the movie's official album). "Push" landed back on multiple Billboard charts after several decades of irrelevance; the movie may have been using the song ironically, but it still helped remind its massive audience just how catchy it is, as well as introduce its younger audience to the song for the first time.
"Our Flag Means Death" isn't as big as "Stranger Things" or "Barbie," but the fact that "This Woman's Work" is seemingly so underrated among Bush's other songs means a little boost might go a long way. "I don't understand how this has like 5% of the views of her other songs," reads the top comment on the video. "This to me is her ultimate masterpiece." While it wouldn't be fair to call "This Woman's Work" a hidden gem — it's certainly not hidden to Bush fans — the song has definitely been undeservedly forgotten over time. Perhaps "Our Flag Means Death" will finally fix that.