Halsey Covers Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ at Governors Ball

Halsey brought Kate Bush’s resurged “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” to the festival stage as the Saturday headliner for New York City’s Governors Ball Music Festival.

Ahead of her performance, they tweeted: “I have surprises tonight for me Gov Ball set,“ but was sure to make the disclaimer: “Songs not people lol don’t get too excited.”

The use of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” in the new fourth season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” has sparked a resurgence in popularity of the track, which recently outpaced its 1985 No. 30 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 and became Bush’s first top 10 breakthrough on the chart.

After the set, the singer retweeted a video of her “Hill” performance on Twitter, writing, “truly wish I wrote this song more than anything in the world” and said she “knew immediately I wanted to do this” following the resurgence of the song.

Halsey also took the opportunity to perform her new single for the first time, the much-buzzed-about “So Good.” The release of the song was quite the journey for the singer, who posted a video on TikTok in May telling their audience that their label (Capitol Records) would not let them drop the song until they could “fake a viral moment” on the app.

The complaint, which Halsey later referred to as her “TikTok tantrum,” ended up turning into a “viral moment” within itself. In the aftermath, Capitol Records responded with words of support saying they would commit to releasing “So Good” on June 9. The release of the song was also accompanied by a music video that showcased and detailed the journey of Halsey’s relationship with filmmaker Alev Aydin.

For this year’s Governors Ball, Kid Cudi appeared as Friday’s headliner, while J. Cole is slated as the Sunday headlining artist. Other artists in the Saturday lineup included Denzel Curry, Tove Lo, Still Woozy, YG, Flume and more.

Additional reporting by Emanuel Okusanya.

Subscribe to Variety Newsletters and Email Alerts!