The Last of Us EP3 (No spoilers)

[LessAspin]

8. ***Spoilers***

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"The Last of Us" may have had its "Stranger Things" moment early, in the third episode of its initial season. The bump that the Netflix show gave to a song, Kate Bush's classic "Running Up That Hill (Deal with God)," which played for quite a long time during a pivotal moment for the characters, was echoed by HBO's new zombie series. The song in "The Last of Us" was Linda Ronstadt's 1970 hit "Long, Long Time" and it was less of a moment and more a whole episode keyed around the ballad. Titled after the song, the bottle episode introduces the characters of Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), their love story, its beginning and its end.

It remains to be seen whether the emotional episode will do for Ronstadt what "Stranger Things" did for Bush (and to a lesser extent, Metallica, whose banger "Master of Puppets" also played during a climactic moment), but searches for Ronstadt skyrocketed after the episode aired. Her name trended on Twitter, and U.S. streams of the song increased by a stunning 4,900% in one hour alone, according to Spotify.

What's the song, why was this one chosen for the show and what happened to Ronstadt, often called the "First Lady of Rock"?

From "Stranger Things" to TikTok: Kate Bush speaks to lonely kids. Here's why
Born into an Arizona ranching family, Ronstadt became the lead singer of a folk-rock group, the Stone Poneys, in the 1960s. Her first album as a solo artist, 1969's "Hand Sewn . . . Hand Grown" is commonly referred to as the first alt-country release by a woman artist. She released her second album only a year later. That album, "Silk Purse" contains the track used by "The Last of Us."

"Long, Long Time" was a song Ronstadt allegedly had to persuade her record company to include...

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