If you watched the Netflix series Russian Doll, you should recognize Harry Nilsson’s 1971 song “Gotta Get Up” as the sonic signal that protagonist Nadia Vulvokov has restarted her death day. The song plays each time Nadia, portrayed by Natasha Lyonne, reawakens from death in the bathroom at her 36th birthday party—the series’ morbid twist on Groundhog Day. In some episodes, Nadia dies multiple times and thus the song loops.
Fans of the series apparently still can’t get enough of the track. People on Spotify are listening to “Gotta Get Up” on repeat. Spotify listeners in the US who streamed the song listened to it four times per day on average during the first week of the show’s Feb. 1 debut, Spotify said in a blog post on Thursday.
Overall, the streaming-music company has seen a big boost in streams of “Gotta Get Up” since Russian Doll hit Netflix. Streams of the song were up 3,300% on Spotify on Feb. 6, compared to the previous Wednesday, Jan. 30, the company said. It declined to reveal the number of times the song was streamed. The remastered version of “Gotta Get Up” has been played more than 2.7 million times globally overall, the app indicated on Feb. 20. In the UK, the song broke onto Spotify’s weekly list of the top 50 viral songs, or the most shared and trending tracks, on Feb. 14, taking the 42nd spot.
And to think, whether the song could even be used in the show was a big question mark throughout much of production. “Gotta Get Up,” the lead track on Nilsson’s biggest commercial success, “Nilsson Schmilsson,” reportedly eclipsed most of the music budget for the production because of how many times the track was used in the show. The late singer-songwriter’s estate also limited the production to a certain amount of uses, the New York Times reported (paywall). Final approval reportedly came late in the editing process.
Spotify noted that other songs have received lifts in streams after being featured prominently in TV shows in the past, including “Cold Little Heart,” the theme song from HBO’s Big Little Lies, and “You’ve Got Time,” from Orange Is the New Black. But none of those tracks Spotify analyzed saw the quadruple-digit increase “Gotta Get Up” experienced. “It gave a mostly overlooked tune, dare we say, a new life,” the company said of the series in the blog post.
Searches for “Gotta Get Up” also hit a new high on Google worldwide from Feb. 3-9, after Russian Doll was released.
