Every state’s Stranger Things fun fact

Arizona: Gentleman Afterdark’s song from Stranger Things season 3

Arizona has possibly one of the more interesting and fascinating connections with Stranger Things. A Phoenix band went from having just a few hits a month on Spotify to having over 150,000 hits a month when the show played their song on the season 3 premiere.

The 80s band Gentleman Afterdark first created the song in 1983 with THE Alice Cooper and Dick Wagner as producers. While the song never found a large audience back in the day, it certainly did when everyone heard it while binge-watching season 3.

It was all due to the music supervisor of the show, Nora Felder. She did an interview with Billboard describing why she chose that song over something more well-known from the 80s.

"“We were originally considering a widely known song. For a number of reasons, however, we decided to experiment with other options and I decided to test ‘Open The Door’ and loved the way it flowed with these scenes. I’m also quite fond of it and often thought it sounded just as great as many hit songs from the ’80s. Thankfully the producers felt the same way, and I’m hoping that it will deservedly find a new audience.”"

But it wasn’t just on Spotify that the band made it big. People listened to their music and watched their videos on YouTube as well. According to Brian Davis, the lead singer, one video of the song had 50,000 views. He also said at the time that the record label wanted to re-release the song on vinyl! It’s amazing how much can change for someone when a very popular show chooses their song to play during an important scene.

The placement of the song was made possible due to the Phoenix record label, Fervor Records, which specializes in putting songs in movies and TV shows.

The session that created the now-famous song included Brian Smith on vocals, his brother, Barry on keyboards and violin, Robin Johnson on guitar and vocals, Winston Watson on drums, and Fred Cross on bass.