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(CNN) --
Linda Ronstadt's "Long, Long Time" appeared not once but three times on this Sunday's episode of "The Last of Us."
And fans of HBO's most recent hit were clearly moved by Ronstadt's song, as views of her ballad have skyrocketed since the episode premiered.
Between 11 p.m. ET and midnight this Sunday, Spotify's streams of "Long, Long Time" increased 4,900% compared to the previous week, the platform reported this week.
CNN contacted Spotify to confirm the number of streams before and after the airing of "The Last of Us."
In the meantime, the song is already showing up on TikToks from excited viewers who loved the episode.
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The song was performed by actors Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman in a pivotal sequence from the third episode of "The Last of Us," in which their characters meet by chance, take turns playing Ronstadt's song at vastly different rhythms on an antique piano and share a kiss (and, eventually, nearly 20 years of their lives).
The episode closes with Ronstadt's rendition of the song played on a cassette tape.
“I knew the song needed to touch on certain issues about longing, pain, and endlessly unrequited love,” series co-creator Craig Mazin told Variety.
Ronstadt released "Long, Long Time" in 1970 as a single from his second album, "Silk Purse".
The song charted for 12 weeks, peaking at number 25, according to Billboard.
It was his first single to appear on a Billboard chart.
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Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett share an intimate moment to the Linda Ronstadt soundtrack in "The Last of Us."
The renewed interest in Ronstadt's ballad harkens back to the overwhelming wave of popularity for “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God),” Kate Bush's power ballad that appeared on several episodes of “Stranger Things” last year.
Nearly 40 years after its release, Bush's signature song returned to the charts, reaching No. 1 in the UK and No. 4 in the US. By 1985, the song had peaked at No. 30, Billboard reported.
When the fourth season of "Stranger Things" launched at the end of May, "Running Up That Hill" started getting millions of streams per day.
Kate Bush's 1985 hit "Running Up That Hill" is back, and here's why
Super popular series, particularly those with a large Gen Z audience, have shown unique power to resurrect certain songs, particularly on TikTok.
"Euphoria" introduced younger viewers to Gerry Rafferty's '70s hit "Right Down the Line," a song Zendaya's character Rue hears more than once in the show's second season.
And it also resonated with millions of people on TikTok: the hashtag #rightdowntheline has been viewed more than 5 million times on the social network, and more than 34,000 videos used the official version of the song as an audio snippet.
(HBO, home of "The Last of Us" and "Euphoria," shares parent company Warner Bros. Discovery with CNN.)
The Netflix mega-hit "Wednesday," which broke viewership records previously held by "Stranger Things," featured a viral scene set to The Cramps' "Goo Goo Muck" in which the Addams Family daughter performs an idiosyncratic dance to the punk anthem beat.
The Netflix clip of the scene has amassed more than 43 million views and Google searches for the song skyrocketed in early December, shortly after the series launched.
But the scene also resurrected, albeit indirectly, Lady Gaga's "Bloody Mary," from her 2011 album "Born This Way."
Millions of TikTok users eager to recreate the dance to "Wednesday" soundtracked their attempts, launching the song onto the Billboard charts for the first time (although it was Gaga's 36th Billboard Hot 100 entry). .
Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" rose to fourth on the Billboard Hot 100 charts last year after it featured prominently on "Stranger Things."
Meanwhile, Ronstadt's ballad isn't even the first song to appear on "The Last of Us" to pique fans' interest.
The pilot episode ended with Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again," whose views tripled overnight, from 26,000 the day the pilot aired to 83,000 the next day, according to Billboard.
Depeche Mode's official YouTube account even added a parenthesis to the song's music video title: "(Heard on The Last of Us Episode 1)."
So far, few old songs turned new hits have reached the same heights as Bush's "Running Up That Hill" last year, but "The Last of Us" shows that his success was no exception.
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