We’ve certainly been keeping an eye on streaming and digital services since Kate’s global smash hit with Running Up that Hill in 2022. And later this Summer something quite unexpected is likely to take place on the world’s biggest music streaming platform, Spotify. While none of Kate’s songs are now ever likely to overtake Running Up That Hill as her most streamed track, if daily streams continue as they currently are, Army Dreamers will supplant Kate’s signature hit single, Wuthering Heights, on the 15th August as her second most-streamed song on Spotify. We project it to reach in excess of 230 million streams in or around that date.

This milestone is significant for a couple of reasons. Firstly, of all of Kate’s well-known hits, even just a few years ago it would have been expected that only Cloudbusting, This Woman’s Work, Babooshka, The Man With The Child In His Eyes or Hounds of Love would be among the songs that could possibly challenge Wuthering Heights in global popularity, even on streaming services which traditionally skew to a younger demographic. Army Dreamers, while well-loved, never seemed to have the same traction as those huge hit songs.

Kate Bush Army Dreamers goes Viral

Secondly, as we reported last year, Army Dreamers has captured the imagination of young people the world over and has become a viral sensation on TikTok and Instagram, with that demographic latching on to the beautiful sentiments in the song as they grapple with at least two dreadful major world conflicts happening on the news in Ukraine and Gaza. Kate is not unknown in the wider world anymore (thank you, Stranger Things) and here she is spelling out the futility of war in perhaps the most effecting way possible, through this achingly timeless song.

The Army Dreamers phenomenon has not, we imagine, been lost on Kate herself. We have reported in March that Kate has helped raise over £500,000 for the charity War Child in just the last year alone, with the release of her animated film Little Shrew, and the money raised from her signed Soundwaves art prints and Boxes of Lost at Sea vinyl presentations. And, if you visit Kate’s official Fish People website landing page today, you will notice that the Army Dreamers music video is presented in all its glory (in a good quality Vimeo stream) for fans old and new to enjoy. We’re also very fond of the “Mrs Mop” performance above that Kate did on Rock Pop in Germany in 1980, along with Paddy Bush, Del Palmer and Andy Bryant as her performing soldier pals.