The Last of Us: The Song By Bill And Frank Hits Spotify That Played in Episode 3
The Last of Us: "Long, long time" by Linda Ronstadt has undergone a boost in plays on Spotify after appearing in the third episode.
The Last of Us: “Long, long time” by Linda Ronstadt has undergone a boost in plays on Spotify after appearing in the third episode. Linda Ronstadt’s song “Long, long time” saw a 4900% listener increase on Spotify within the hour between 11-12 pm Sunday night (Eastern Time) after appearing within the third installment of The Last of Us, dedicated to the love story between Bill and Frank; to communicate the anomalous peak, Spotify itself, via Twitter: “Last night, our hearts broke”, reads the tweet, accompanying a clear infographic.
The Last of Us: The Song By Bill And Frank Hits Spotify
Linda Ronstadt’s piece is an integral part of the plot of the episode: the two protagonists, Bill and Frank, discover their mutual attraction thanks to this song; Frank starts playing it, using Bill’s old piano, before Bill arrives and starts singing the refrain: “Love will abide, take things in stride. Sounds like good advice but there’s no one at my side” The song appears in its original version at the end of the episode, played on a car stereo.
Referring to the choice of song, showrunner Craig Mazin told Variety: “I needed a song that struck the chords of longing, pain, and endless unrequited love; and, damn it, I couldn’t find the right piece, try as I might; I finally wrote to my friend Seth Rudetsky, a true seer and radio host; I told him what I needed, and he found me this song a second later”.
Oh, so all our hearts were breaking last night… 🍓 #TheLastOfUs pic.twitter.com/upTiav0MLw
— Spotify News (@SpotifyNews) January 30, 2023
A mechanism similar to what happened to Depeche Mode’s Never Let Me Down Again, used at the end of the pilot of the series, and which enjoyed a similar sudden increase in audience, “limited” however to 377% more. Mazin again: “I needed a song from the 80s that wasn’t overused and had a certain black humor; I asked my wife, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of that decade, and she found it for me right away”. “Long, long, time” spent 12 weeks in the Billboard top 100, peaking at number twenty-five.
