“Running Up That Hill” (1985) by Kate Bush is #1 on ITunes singles after being featured in Stranger Things

It’s good to see her doing well, I love Kate and it’s such an underrated song in the US.

I remember that this song was played on an episode of Pose and everybody was verklempt about it.

Honestly I may have listened to the song a few times in the 80’s. I enjoy it tremendously now. They play it on the New Wave SiriusXM station fairly often.

What the fuck does it mean?

NUMBER ONE!

YAAASSSSSS!!!!

Kate explains

I was born in 86 and this wasn’t one of those 80s songs you heard all the time in the 90s like many others. I don’t remember ever hearing it until POSE. And I liked it.

But in 2022 I love it more. Idk why.

"It’s good to see her doing well, I love Kate and it’s such an underrated song in the US."

It was underrated, I'm not saying it wasn't. I love that record. I believe it was her biggest hit in the US, though. It only hit #30 on Billboard. She deserved much more success in the US.

The Little Unsaid does a great cover.

Placebo did probably the best cover of the song so far.

It's no Wuthering Heights.

One of the best power pop songs ever made. It’s just stunning and timeless. Really glad it’s getting renewed appreciation.

This song has a lasting feel. I heard it for the first time earlier this year. She was ahead of her time. It sounds like something haim would make

Or Robyn

I friggin love Kate Bush. I remember sitting in my room as a teenager in the late 80s blasting her music.

I never got her Popera appeal. She shriek-sings.

^ I wasn’t a fan of her singing style in her first couple of albums. But she settled down by “Hounds of Love” and her voice was rich and frequently wonderful.

First Elton with his ‘Cold Cold Heart’, and now Kate

I love how these veteran musicians are being discovered and embraced, anew, by the younger generations

With Spanish subtitles

R9, Pat Benatar’s cover was better.

I am an Old who never watched the show

but that clip at R17 has me 😭😭😭😭😭😭

R16 ummm the original Cold Cold Heart wasn’t getting love. It’s the sample on Dua Lipa’s song. Not the same as the original becoming a hit again.

And it's #1 on the UK Spotify as well.

It was put to excellent use in that episode of Stranger Things. I’ve never been so frightened for a tv character in my life.

Love the song. Have since I first heard it in 1989 on a college radio program.

[quote] I’ve never been so frightened for a tv character in my life.

MARY!

I thought it was used very effectively in It's a Sin.

Running Up That Hill and Cloudbursting were the two songs which first introduced me to Kate Bush. They'll always hold a special place in my heart.

Glad a younger generation is getting exposed to this great singer.

Running Up That Hill got released as a remix ten years ago.

I don't think the song will ever be really forgotten.

Thank you, R4!

🙂🙂

I love this song so much

The scene it was used in Stranger Things

^that was a brilliant scene. Perfect music choice, the floating grandfather clock, all the flashbacks, the music swells, the slow motion run towards the hole where you can see her floating, with all the things falling down around her and then the cut to black. If they had ended the episode right there I definitely would have been in tears.

I really don’t wanna post spoilers and encourage anyone who hasn’t seen it but is going to watch it to watch it soon. That was an epically scary and emotional scene.

I’ve watched it 5 or 6 times and can’t move on to the next episode. Every time I watch it I get goosebumps and feel like I’m gonna start to cry because it was so well done. That was a master class in how to build tension and lead the viewer to expect the worst.

It’s no wonder the song hit the top of the charts. It was an odd, but perfect choice. It doesn’t fit the theme of the scene at all (the song is about wanting to switch places with her partner and have him have a baby!) but the drum beats, the melancholy- it really drove the scene.

It’s also my favorite Kate Bush song ever.

Running up that hill doesn’t define Kate Bush. She is so much more.

R30 I wonder if she’s stlll walking after that drop on her legs like that

Some songs and artists don't require covers and those of her that are covered always pale in comparison to the original. Kate is peerless. Check out The Dreaming album for full on batshit craziness- but in a good way.

She is theatrical, charismatic, electrifying, eccentric, sprawling, colorful, unique, elegant, flamboyant. It’s a wonder why in the US the gays in particular had no interest in her whatsoever. Especially when it comes to something that doesn’t quite fit that gay pop demographic mold was highly influenced by her like Tori Amos, who was just absolutely swooned over by that same gay community. You’d have thought they would have at least looked into Tori’s biggest influences. They’d see number 1 with a bullet would obviously be Kate. As far as the 80s they were so consumed with their obsession with their precious Madge, was there really anyone else that actually mattered at the time? Madonna herself has gone on record perfusing her admiration for the like of similar piers like Cocteau Twins, Björk and PJ Harvey who all heavily borrowed Kates stylings. Everyone of that art alt era and ever since including men have borrowed plentifully from her. But better late than never. Makes your Dua’s and Adele’s and Kim Petra’s and that Dojo Kat lady pale in comparison. Wasn’t the Doja Kat show a muppet like kid show that used to air in the 80s before WWF Superstars? Well as long as this 80s legend didn’t go the Picasso well after they’re dead route, until they finally gained deserved notoriety, that this is finally happening “ 🎶 Wow! Wow! Wow! Unbelievable 🎵 “

[quote]Running up that hill doesn’t define Kate Bush. She is so much more.

Oh yes! She’s brilliant. My favorite artist ever. But I’m really excited that the song hit the charts and that a whole new generation is just discovering her.

I introduced my nieces to her when they were in junior high and said, this is important! Listen to it and you’ll love it. And my youngest niece flipped out that the song was in Stranger Things and that she already knew it. I’ve also taught them the ways of PJ Harvey and Bjork. Bjork was a hard sell and I don’t think they ever came around to liking her. 🤷🏻

^^^ Bjork after Homogenic is definitely a harder sell for the uninitiated. She and PJ were stalwarts of '90s and early '00s MTV.

R35, you and I just posted about the virtues of Bjork and PJ Harvey in almost the same second!

[quote]Bjork after Homogenic is definitely a harder sell for the uninitiated.

I would’ve said after Post. Homogenic was a hard sell. She’s only charted twice in the US, and “It’s Oh So Quiet” didn’t even chart. And that seemed like it was everywhere!

What made it work in that scene, apart from the tension in the music, was the lyrics "If I could, I'd make a deal with God... Running up that road, running up that hill" while Max is running towards the exit

Treat yourselves to the genius of Suspended in Gaffa, released three years prior to RUTH.

[quote]What made it work in that scene, apart from the tension in the music, was the lyrics "If I could, I'd make a deal with God... Running up that road, running up that hill" while Max is running towards the exit.

Definitely, but the song is very misleading. I think when she’s saying if I could make a deal with god to switch our places, I’d be running up that road, she’s saying I’m too pregnant to be running up a road, much less a hill or a building!. It sounds like a break up song though.

I love her for that. Experiment IV is another example. It’s almost joyful but she’s taking about scientists that can make a sound that can kill?? Dark stuff!

I don’r really like the Placebo cover of Running up that Hill. It makes it seem extra dark and ominous. Too much so.

[quote]It’s a wonder why in the US the gays in particular had no interest in her whatsoever.

Agreed! I love Stevie and no offense to Stevie Nicks fans, but if we can have a Night of 1.000 Stevies, we should have had a Night of 1,000 Kates too!! She’s definitely deserving.

R20:

[quote] It’s the sample on Dua Lipa’s song.

Yes and no. While the original ‘Sacrifice’ didn’t become a hit, it’s not fair to describe it as a ‘sample on Dua Lipa’s song’, as they share equal play on the song. It’s just as much an Elton John song as it is a Dua Lipa number

Amazing live version with David Gilmour…and the bass player’s hair.

Kate looks like Liz Taylor of a certain period at r45

For British men of a certain vintage, Kate and Agnetha from ABBA were their go to for the quaintly called 'hand shandy'. Elder straights were positively creaming themselves in 1979 when Kate decided to do a turn on an ABBA TV special.

She didn’t perform concerts too often after this period I believe, maybe a few tv appearance here and there. I know she had stage freight. That might have been her saving grace with the gay community (in the States where the crickets chirping made a louder impression than her music) had she continued touring cause her shows were as theatrical and dazzling as it got from the few that she did. Maybe that is the biggest difference between her and women that she influenced like Goldfrapp and Tori who toured every chance they got and have since made a huge impression in the gay community. That’s my take at least.

It’s also number one on Spotify. In fact I was noticing her number 2 & 3 songs Wuthering Heights and Babooshka were skyrocketing from when I last looked at how well she was doing a while back. So that must be people really are going into the back catalogue like I was hoping and the resurgence, well in the States any kind of acknowledgement, will resume for some time. “Hammer Horror” I could picture them using and even to some extent “the Wedding List” just on its graphic nature alone. I also thought “Get Out of this House” from the Dreaming but with rebellious, rambunctious teens, the Smiths “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” might be a better fit for a being kicked out by ones house dramatic number. I’m no Richard Blade but it’d seem a more natural fit. Either way just any kind of reference to Kate Bush having a number one song in the US let alone in 2022, I had it as a “fat lady sings” or “pigs could fly” scenario to it. People said that about her touring again and even though she did only a few intimate venues, still happened. Even with it now being a glorified I Heart Radio Kiis FM teeny bopper event, you know the Coachella booking team would be chopping at the bit and hopefully use her as an excuse as a way to bring it back to its indie credentials. It’s still more likely than the Smiths reunion they’d been begging for so who knows.

The visual effects in that Stranger Things clip look like shit. That's what $30 million an episode gets you?

I guess it's worth it if it turns on more people to Kate Bush, though.

The [elder] Gays are lovin’ it too

R51 how “elder” are they?

Sad when the muscle mary queens at R51 are getting down with the kids. They're both old enough to have been of music listening age the first time that song was out but they were likely too busy mincing around to the Weather Girls or the Pointer Sisters. Pfft.

[quote] Running up that hill doesn’t define Kate Bush. She is so much more.

True, but in terms of the US, it is her best known song, even prior to this.

Now #8 on the US Hot 100.

R53 the fact that you use “muscle marys” to describe guys who are in shape means that you are an ancient bitter fag.

Be glad that the genius of Kate Bush has been rediscovered in 2022.

[quote] What the fuck does it mean?

She doesn't seem to have any hangups at all about sexuality, and while I think the song is overall steeped in empathy and really just a wish for greater understanding between men and women/among different people, I think the opening lines and chrous are overtly sexual:

[quote] It doesn't hurt me. Do you want to feel how it feels? Do you want to know? Know that it doesn't hurt me...and if I only could...I'd be running up that hill, running up that building with no problem.

Just personal speculation, but I wonder if the song may have originated in a sexual encounter with some guy who was too gentle with her, and her wanting to communicate that they are built differently and it doesn't hurt her physically and she wishes he could understand that. I'm a gay man and I've had sex with men who are too gentle and insistently feel like they "don't want to hurt" me, when all I wanted was a good fucking.

The video is very sensual and physical if not explicitly sexual, with Kate and a male dancer intertwining, and I think that demonstrates that the song is at least in part about physical sexuality. But it also features both of tuek wearing similar gender-ambiguous clothing, demonstrating her idea that they're essentially the same but can't relate because of physical differences.

Tori Amos's 'A Sorta Fairytale' has sexually explicit lyrics that people never registered with almost anyone in a similar way. She sings about pulling back her [clittoral] hood while riding in a car, breaking the lining "till my honey spread itself so thin" and then at the end "I put the hood right back where you could taste heaven perfectly."

I think both artists' lyrics are so cryptic isn't just for the sake of being obscure or avant garde or poetic but because they make music they want to be popular and get radio play and so it has to be subversive if it deals explicitly with taboo topics like sex, religion, psychedlia, conspiracy theory, criticism of governments, etc., which they both do to significant degrees.

I didn't like the song when I first heard it back in the 80s but over the years it has grown on me.

Still prefer Wuthering Heights & Babooshka.

Another muscular gay gentleman of a certain vintage using Kate’s song for promotional purposes!

Although, to be fair, I’m sure model Brian @gymn0s would have know this number back in the day

^ would have knowN

I...I...really don't get the narcissistic gym monkeys using her song as a backdrop for their self-flaunting. Is there some kind of logic to this that would help me to understand this trend? The song is the expression of a wish that women and men could inhabit one another's bodies to better understand one another's perspectives. How does that relate to bodybuilders objectifying their physiques?

R61 is sadly hilarious

You are really overthinking it gramps

Now they need to start putting Roisin Murphy tunes in scores. Lady Gaga totally bit her style.

I've been hoping for a couple of decades that Tori Amos music would finally break through to mainstream appreciation in this way. It's so crazy to me that this artist has so many talents--musicianship, vocal talent, lyrical brilliance, exceptional insights--and she's been invisible in plain sight for decades while people buy every robo-paint-by-numbers pop song that is churned out by pop tartlets and Drag Race contestants. So bizarre. Very happy for Kate.

Like most British people of my age, my frame of reference for this song is Running Scared, with the bins and the Woolwich ferry!

Tori Amos got the American gay following that Kate should have had and also unlike Kate her albums charted really well. Boys for Pele debuted at number 2 on the billboard which is bizarre since it was her first album with no real hits even on the alternative rock singles charts. Tori was the answer to the what if as far as people wondering what Kates success would have been had she kept touring the States and the kind of following she would have had, which was majorly a great deal the lgbt community. Kates did tour at first and even had a memorable performance on SNL but the low ticket sales and her stage freight were what did her in. Where as Tori was the polar opposite and set records in the 90s for having the most tours in the country. So Tori in theory took Kates American following especially the gays who SHOULD have loved her but the low ticket sales at the beginning of her brief touring stint in the States said otherwise. Sucks that the gays in the US were so enamored with Madonna in that pivotal time frame that the Sineads and Siouxsies and Cocteau Twins, or course Kate, even Sade, all had to take a backseat when all the great talent was coming from the same region Madge herself would later reside and develop that ridiculous accent.

Tori is a pale derivative of Kate and hasn’t produced anything remotely commercial since her first LE album.

Kate, on the other hand, is a goddess.

R66 It is an anomaly that such an avant garde album charted so well, but Boys for Pele is argued by many to be her greatest album. It's definitely one of her best, and probably her most inspired. It's brilliant in its own way, and it can only be measured according to its own standard.

Boys for Pele is a good example of how Kate Bush and Tori Amos are similar but entirely different.

Both Kate and Tori produce their own music, play their own music, sing their own music, write their own lyrics. Both create unique music unlike anyone else's. Both use unusual song structures and pretty abstract lyrics about pretty difficult-to-access subject matter.

Those similarities are all the scaffolding of their music. The details of their music are totally different. Boys for Pele sounds nothing at all like any Kate Bush album, and it has nothing at all in common with any Kate Bush album lyrically or thematically. It's utterly unique. And the same is true of Kate's best albums. The two are always compared because of superficial reasons, but their art is not similar at all.

Boys for Pele, and most of Tori's music, is intensely internal and personal to her life, and it is primarily confessional poetry and critical essays in nature.

Most of Kate's music is *not* personal, not interior to her world, but expressive and observational, and she effectively writes musical short stories for the most part, along with some abstract theoretical essays on art and philosophy.

Their backgrounds and influences are also entirely different.

Tori is a pianist first and foremost and a musical composer. She has studied piano intensely all her life. She is a magical/mystical animal, and she came by this honestly, raised by Bible thumpers and Eastern Cherokee influences colliding and causing her to question what's real, what's manipulation of various authorities, and so on. She has an organic affinity for gay men because her first professional job was working for years in a gay bar in Georgetown when no one else would hire her, and she learned a lot and made friends there. She also picked up a lot about D.C. politics from the clientele there and at bars on Capitol Hill. She has unique influences. Musically, she claims her primary influences were Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell and others but not Kate Bush very much, although she admires her greatly. I hear all of that in her music.

Kate is different. She is not as accomplished of a pianist. She is very much more "art for art's sake," and performance art including dance and mime are primary to her music, whereas they are irrelevant to Tori's music. Kate is interested in literature and cultures and she is not only musically influenced by those but she writes her songs about them, as well as some political and relationship-based stuff. But not much confessional stuff, and not much criticism of religious and political authorities, etc., which are all primary to Tori's work.

I was a young kid when Kate was in her prime, and so I don't get why she would be considered to be a gay icon *aside from her obvious genius* which should make everyone admire her. I don't know of any songs or interviews in which she has ever addressed the gay community in any way. Has she?

Y wants to be X so bad.

Hey Tori Amos Troll?

SHUT THE FUCK UP

Nobody has been interested in Tori for 25 years

Sadly nobody can name a single Tori song. Except maybe SATY.

R71 Most people who can name a song of hers say Cornflake Girl.

Cornflake Girl is paying homage to Kate’s own Rubberband Girl

Has anyone checked in with that queen who wrote a blog/book about how the only thing keeping him from suicide was the anticipation of Kate Bush releasing a new album? Hopefully this development has given him a new lease on life.

.........

Well as far as why she should have had that gay followings in the States all along, if you’ve seen her videos alone it’s very visually appealing in colors and theatrics and her movements which people don’t realize it’s not just her music that’s influential. I was watching the best of alternative en espanol on the Spanish channel and female rockers, they emulate Kate Bush’s movements and mannerisms in her music videos it’s almost surreal how to a fault they are able to capture that essence of hers. You see it everywhere worldwide. And again when it came to her early days of touring set was introduced by the likes of David Gilmore and Peter Gabriel and Elton John so like them the theatrics in her shows were over the top, outrageous, flashy, eccentric and shimmering. Just maybe slightly off from a Cher or Madonna concert that the gays just absolutely embrace and eat up. But sadly that didn’t resonate until now especially with the muscle hunks and strippers oddly enough. People think that’s weird. To me that the song “Against All Odd” by Phil Collins is even bigger with the male strippers, I found that beyond vexing.

Cornflake girl is the most annoying song ever made

Only the “peel off the watch wear” part to me is pretty cringe. Both the way it interprets and brings the song to a bizarre halt and the lyrics itself. In fact when reading the lyrics she seems to be saying “RABBIT where’d you put the keys girl” and not “by the way where’d put the keys girl” The latter would clearly make more sense. The song “Spark” I WISH I hadn’t read the lyrics. “You thought that you were the finest, well so did I” was what I thought but it turns out it’s “You thought that you were THE BOMB well so did I.” How dated and lame. Yikes

*interrupts not interprets

Madonna wishes she was charting like Kate.

R78 It's "Peal out the watchword."

[quote] Peal out the watchword! silence it never! Song of our spirits, rejoicing and free; Peal out the watchword! loyal forever, King of our lives, by Thy grace we will be.

And it is, "Rabbit, where'd you put the keys, girl?" Rabbit is a nickname of a childhood friend of hers who died, and she's referring to the superstitious belief that when objects like keys are missing, a ghost moved it, which a lot of people believe.

She's taking the piss out of an exuberant hymn from her childhood as well as from the idea of a haunting. In her world, it's just an everyday thing, and instead of being bothered by it or making a big deal of it, she's just addressing the ghost casually like you would an annoying child who hid your keys from you when you need to get somewhere.

Like a lot of her songs from Under the Pink and Boys for Pele, and even like Silent All These Years, the song is full of loose associations from her mind that relate tangentially to a greater theme or idea.

This kind of abstract lyricism/poetry is way too abstract for a lot of people's tastes, and for those sorts of people it certainly doesn't help that Tori's lyrics on many of her album have meanings that relate to specific events from her life instead of universal, broad references we can all understand. (Scarlet's Walk does the latter a lot more, although many lyrics are still references to obscure things that require attention to interpret in context.) Kate's lyrics, on the other hand, are easier to interpret because they mostly are not references from her personal life and can be accessed. Cloudbusting, for example, has wacky lyrics like "Like my yo-yo that glowed in the dark, what made it special made ir dangerous, so I bury it and forget..." That sounds like a personal anecdote with some bizarre superstitious element but Kate clearly explains outside of the song that it is based on events from a memoir and so you can read the memoir if you want and figure out what it means.

These sorts of things are why I say Kate and Tori have superficial similarities (abstract meanings presented in unusual ways) that really are not alike at all (Tori more often is writing from a personal vantage point and drawing from intimate personal experiences, whereas Kate often writes about books, art, other sources beyond herself and then points people in those directions to learn more and figure things out).

People are keen to say one is good and one is bad but I don't see it that way at all. They look and sound similar in some ways but they aren't. Marc Chagall is my favorite painter and I see his art like I hear Tori's music. Some of his paintings look like they could be called Cubist, but he didn't conform to Picasso's and Brach's studied approaches to Cubism as part of that movement. He created his own visual language of symbols that had personal meaning to him drawing from Jewish spiritual beliefs, his upbringing in Russia and the life he loved in Paris, and personal relationships with his wife et al. Some people look at his paintings and see "cubism," which they're not, exactly (many are not at all, but it's one of the most familiar associations people can make). Some look and see flowers and a bride in some and think they're sweet and romantic. Some look and see a giant chicken juggling and flying goats playing violin and think it's nonsense. Most people kind of disregard the specific images and instead ultimately let themselves feel something from the way he used color and texture. He was an abstract painter in that way, and regarded by many as the greatest painter of color regardless of his subjects/imagery. For me, Tori is the greatest painter of color insofar as her musical compositions. Her songs create more mental visions for me of color and texture than any other artist, to the extent I have sometimes been motivated to paint them. It's a phenomenon that happens from few other songs. I love Kate's music a lot but it is an entirely different experience to me, like the difference between a Chagall painting and a Picasso or Cézanne painting.

Fad Gadget's Back to Nature got played at some stage. It was a rather random selection of an obscure track.

In unrelated news, Debbie Gibson was spotted outside Netflix headquarters with a giant oak tag sign.

🎼🎶🎵 I still dream of Beyoncé's sister singing Cloudbusting.

WHOOPS

Well with Cloudbusting all you have to do is watch the video to see what the song is all about. One of my favorite vids ever actually. People don’t compare lyrics when it comes to spotting similarities on the music similarity spectrum. If they do that’s really low on the totem poll. It’s the music itself. In that case go on about how Pearl Jam and Creed are nothing alike lyrically. Ones just seeming to knock off other. Same with Springsteen and Melloncamp. Nobody’s defending Melloncamp saying “well it’s not like Bruce was born in a small town or writes about it.” That’s not really why comparisons are made in music. If there’s two songwriters or bands who’s lyrical approach is dead on I don’t think many people would figure it out or even care. It’s the sound of the music that they’re comparing. That’s how I’d always figured it. Seems like kind of a stretch when you try to get out of artists frequent comparisons to others because of lyrics. Look at early Cocteau Twins always being compared to Siouxsie. No way can you bring up lyrics when Liz is notoriously just chanting nonsensically.

Kate always sings through a persona. She has really taken the rather old fashioned idea of dramatis personae and gone very far with it.

In fact, I can hardly think of a song that she sings in ‘her own voice’ [at least from her pre-21st century albums], so Kate fans, please help me out here:

What are the songs that present Kate as Kate herself, an affluent upper middle class English girl?

Kate Bush at peak bonkers from The Dreaming - her least commercially successful album - but has recently seen a critical revival.

Whoever decide to spliced it with scenes from The Shining was inspired. A delicious musical nervous breakdown culminating in Satanic chanting.

You can't top that!

R88 Yes, Kate is a very talented short story-esque lyricist.

This song is about her son. I'd argue she should stick to imagined fictions.

Running up that hill to piss n shit

That's the San Francisco Remix!

Waking the witch

Just hit #1 in 3 more countries, #2 in the UK, her album is also moving up the charts. It’s #1 on the alternative US Billboard charts. Her highest ever. It’s breaking records. How crazy.

She just posted again about it.

What does Fish People stand for?

R90: thanks for the clip.

I figured if there’s anything personal it would have to be from her post-2000 corpus of work, with which I’m much less familiar

R88, for more autobiographical songs, deal with romance- Never Be Mine from The Sensual World. Why Should I Love You?, You're the One from The Red Shoes. If you're looking for 'affluent, upper class English girl', Them Heavy People from her debut album, although it presents her as precocious than anything.

I understand the Kate and Tori comparisons but for me, Tori is more forced and contrived in her songwriting. Lots of clunky 'imagery'- "But what if I'm a mermaid, in these jeans of his with her name still on it".

or

"We laughed in the faces of king never afraid to burn"

and who can forget

"Where the pretty girls are Those demigods With their nine-inch nails And little fascist panties Tucked inside the heart Of every nice girl"

"[R9], Pat Benatar’s cover was better."

Since I am in the U.S., Pat Benatar's version was the first version that I heard. I was playing the LP "Crimes of Passion" over and over for months in 1980-1981. I loved "Wuthering Heights" especially. I even read the book because of Pat's version. I wanted to know what the song was really about. (I was always a reader, but this was the first time that a song inspired me to read a book.) Anyway, I knew it was a cover of a Kate Bush song (I was an avid reader of Rolling Stone back then) and eventually sought out a copy of Kate Bush's "The Kick Inside" at a used record store. I have to say, though, that I didn't love Kate's vocals on the song (or the entire album). My appreciation for Kate Bush would come later with, yes, "Hounds of Love" in 1985. It's a beautiful album and like an earlier poster said, her vocals had become a bit deeper and at times gorgeous. BUT, I still prefer Pat's version of "Wuthering Heights." It just hit all the right notes, so to speak. I don't think I would have sought out the book if I had only heard Kate Bush's version. But kudos to her for writing such a striking song.

How can anyone cover Wuthering Heights? Such an original song, delivered in a unique way. It's akin to Adam Lambert now fronting Queen.

R100 that was a piss poor example

yes R100, because Adam Lambert is a piss poor replacement of Freddie.

You can’t replace Freddie and Adam wasn’t a replacement. He is a capable singer and performer who can adequately cover the material probably as good as anyone living.

Oh hi Adam at R103. How was the Jubilee concert in London? You jet lagged?

Oh hi shit 4 brains r104

I just listened to the Pat Benatar cover of Wuthering Heights. I didn’t know that it existed before the comments in this thread.

While Pat’s vocal range is more suited to the song, and more pleasing for my ears, the definitive version belongs to Kate Bush. Her piercing vocals enhance the lyrics of Wuthering Heights and they cannot be separated from the mood of this song.

Pat Benatar added nothing to the song. Are we even arguing about this ? Lol

You think Pat will induct her into the HOF? She’s gotten nominated 3 times already and this new lease on life people are having with her miracle resurgence will probably get her in sooner now rather than later. Prince would have inducted her but would have insisted on doing it solo. My bet would be the trio of Elton John, Peter Gabriel and Big Boi from OutKast who is a massive fan. David Gilmore if he was more recognized or if it took place in the UK since he brought his eccentric, teenage girlfriend at the time on to the scene in the first place. Also if it were in the UK they might have a reunion of that famous Q Magazine cover with Tori, Björk and PJ Harvey to induct her since they’re well known successors to Kates worldwide influence.

"Pat Benatar added nothing to the song. Are we even arguing about this ? Lol"

These are all just opinions here and that is yours. I just listened to Kate's original version of WH and it is excellent. I think it's beautiful and her eccentric vocals certainly add an ethereal, ghostly air to song. Her version is a excellent. But I still prefer Pat Benatar's version. Perhaps because I heard it first. Perhaps because, as an earlier poster said, her vocals are more pleasing to the ear. But it's more than just that. Pat Benatar NAILS the phrase "....You know it's me, Kath-Theeeeee." It made me shiver when I first heard it and it did just now when I listened to it before I listened to Kate's (again, wonderful) version. Just my opinion, but you're not going to change it.

If Peter inducted Kate, then there'd be the chance, however remote (with it being his song, after all), of them performing Don't Give Up together for the first time in 35+ years.

The more probably option, of course, would be for Kate to make a surprise appearance on his upcoming album tour.

R109 Kate doesn’t aim to be pleasing with her music. Lol. Maybe you should listen to some soft easy listening melodies

R97: thanks - ‘Never Be Mine’ is lovely

Young Kate, with eldest brother John Carder [14 years older]

That’s adorable r113

Any shirtless pic of the older Bush bro?

Kate with extremely rare short hair

Are you sure that’s not Jane Weidlin?

"[R109] Kate doesn’t aim to be pleasing with her music. Lol. Maybe you should listen to some soft easy listening melodies"

Again, your opinion. It is not definitive. It's yours.

R114: Lolz no shirtless pics of big brother John I’m afraid

But here’s one of Kate, nestled between 2nd elder brother Paddy, and John

R116: at first I thought it’s a young Gloria Estefan!

Similar to the cover of ‘Hounds of Love’, but smiling

Something more Batty, less Sweet

Has anyone mentioned Under the Ivy yet? The b-side to Running Up that Hill 7". Under three minutes and so much more deserving that just a b-side.

She's a big ol' witch in that very special way that is...just bring a big ol' Brit. All the creatures from A Midsummer Night's Dream are alive and well inside the bubble of her world.

Easy to see why the gays in Britain love her

What exactly are the rollerskating klansmen in her Sat in Your Lap video supposed to be?

Lol. R125 she looks like Joan Collins, not her best look or video but definitely one of her best singles.

This is just sad to me.

This song was already a classic.

Good for her though.

R125 Kate spills all about 'Sat In Your Lap' on 70s/80s kids' show 'Razzamatazz'.

She's so great with the kids - gives really honest and detailed answers without being patronising.

R126 I find the video interesting by 2022 standards because it seems totally psychedelic in a DMT way, not an LSD way.

People who take DMT report seeing/interacting with hyperintelligent 'machine elves' (a silly name for them that has stuck), and often people say they look like elves, court jesters, jokers, goblins, etc.

The KKKlansmen-looking things in her video are wearing dunce caps and so those are explained, but otherwise, the jesters and roller-skating minotaurs against a swirling whirlwind background aren't and they seem very...DMTesque.

R128 That video is a perfect example of how an eccentric person can seem totally bonkers or at least totally nonconformist to the point of seeming nonsensical among adults, and then can relate perfectly to imaginative children in a way that demonstrates they're not out of touch at all, just imaginative.

I haven’t watched it yet. I’ll start it in a few weeks.

So I’m not reading this thread because it’s probably full of spoilers.

But I’m seeing that song EVERYWHERE on social media. Mostly on the younger people I follow. Which frankly is hilarious. If these Gen Zs had just been played Kate Bush by a Gen Xer they’d roll their eyes at the “old people” music. But since it’s in Stranger Things, suddenly it’s validated.

I love how little Kate cares about not looking attractive. Madonna would never have the confidence to gurn or look goggled eyed but then Madonna is just all about superficial attraction. I'll never understand the praise the Blonde Ambition Tour received, being touted as theatre and performance art. The only thing that changed was the costumes, otherwise Madonna just emoted the same two or three expressions for 90 minutes. UK eldergays might remember the fuss some newspapers made back in 1985 when Hounds of Love knocked Like a Virgin off the top spot.

Madonna singing this would be laughable

R132 Madonna is a very talented performance artist—the sum of her performances is much greater than the music, the voice, the dancing or the looks separately.

She and Kate are entirely different.

Kate presented herself in a very sensual way always when she was young. She didn't shy away from showing off her body, she was usually glammed up and polished and pretty looking even with wild facial expressions and body movements.

But she wrote and sang fiction-like songs and she interpreted those songs with her face and body movements.

Madonna has always been mostly didactic, with social messages about being a strong woman, etc. Kate's music is about the human experience in the way literature and other arts are and Madonna's generally speaking about self-empowerment.

Both of them have winks and nods toward situational humor or general silliness now and then but are otherwise strictly serious and humorless about their work.

Kate would be found on the literature/literary fiction/philosophy/fantasy/fine arts shelves and Madonna would be found on the self-help/business/women's & LGBT history shelves.

R128 that clip is a gem. She has a lovely presence with the kids, I can imagine her in a classroom inspiring the next generation. Funny she put the dunces's cap on that boy- today's kids would be triggered.

Musicians + kids is a winning combination.

R136- at least Tori Amos has heard of Tori Spelling! Would the artists known as Gaga handle that with the same humour? Doubtful.

R131 nails it!

I don't think so R122 until you did. It's also one of my favourites along with some of her other slow songs like The Infant Kiss and The Kick Inside. I prefer most of the other songs on Hounds of Love over Running ... It's OK but I like the title track and Cloudbusting along with The Big Sky and The Morning Fog (another particular favourite) much more. Her Irish-flavoured songs, such as Night of the Swallow and Jig of Life, are also excellent.

Like a lot of her music (and a lot of Tori's), I didn't love the sound of Jig of Life at first. It felt too droning and repetitive. But when I realized what it's about, it captured my attention and now I like both the music and the story.

Wow. It’s now at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Unbelievable.

And yet, how much money will she get from it. She's got a huge hit record, but only because of streaming music platforms. She will probably make about $15 off this whole "craze."

R122: OMG Paula Yates

She’s an attractive feisty gal full of promises before it got all burnt out with drugs and wild partying

Lolz now even this cutie - but straight - Kiwi dancing chef, @mancancooknz, is getting in on the act

Surely he’s not straight. Very cute yes.

Lake Tahoe

R144, he’s cute but I’ll pass on eating his Pug Hair Surprise dish.

Kate needs to write and perform a sequel now whilst she is 'hot'. Running Down That Hill perhaps.

Kate is #4 on the Billboard Hot 100

R8 Terrible, he sounds and looks like myspace.

Music in 2022 is such shit that songs from nearly 40 years ago are going back to the Top 5.

More songs should include the world “asunder”. It’s a great word.

Genius

Genius

R148 She doesn't call the song Running Up The Hill. Her title for it has always been Deal With God. The record label insisted she changed it and she acquiesced and regretted it.

So her update could be called Can't Deal With God or Deal With The Devil. Although, she says her original concept was to make a deal with the devil but then she thought that would be a boring cliche, and if you're going to bargain with someone, why would you choose to make a deal with the devil when you could make a deal with God?

Has Kate been seen in public since her 2014 series of concerts?

(R151) There’s been some good singles in 2022 so far but Kate is so iconic and influential that people are finally realizing how ahead of her time she really was. That being said, say what you want about Tori, the stuff today that is so-called “inspired” by Kate, while there are some are hits like Fever Ray and Lykki Li and maybe a few tracks by St. Vincent, some just plain stinks. This pretentious indie folk band from Brooklyn (kind of a redundant statement in 2022) Big Thief are cut from the same cloth as Joanna Newsom who the critics loved to clump as an influence of Kate Bush for whatever God forsaken reason, both are the pits. Newsom sounds more like Morticia Addams when playing that string instrument and chanting 🎶 Tokyo 🎵 But because since critics like to list it in the art rock field, they somehow have to involve poor Kate Bush as a reason they got such a chub for Mrs. Andy Samburg. So when you’re the first name everyone thinks of when art and progressive pop are mentioned, at least with female musicians, you take the heat for a lot of pretentious bs as well. For the new stuff btw I listen to a 75 year old Rodney Bingenheimer to get my fix of best of todays best music ironically. But no I don’t give Richard Blade credit for Kate Bush, even with her being or his era.

Fact: Kate Bush was the first female artist in the United Kingdom to achieve a number-one single with a self-penned song.

Good for her. She just needs a little help from some obscure Netflix series to catapult her to the top of the charts. Not!

R158 Tori's music really has not been similar enough to Kate's to be compared since Under the Pink in 1994. I get the visual comparisons for Y Kant Tori Read and musically for Little Earthquakes, but when Tori produced herself for the first time with Baroque Southern Gothic folk-rock Boys for Pele, she was nothing at all like Kate, and her newest two albums are brilliant albums.

I honestly feel a lot more Kate Bush influence in Björk than I do in Tori. Both Kate and Björk are inventive performance and visual artists first and foremost, and both have made a lot of music that deserves high praise even when it is really unpleasant to listen to. Tori is a musician first and foremost and she has made some 'ugly' sounding songs, but they are rare among her catalog of hundreds of songs.

I'm a big fan of all three. Tori is my favorite for a lot of reasons, but Kate is pretty much a co-favorite on the merits of her artistry. I appreciate Björk but I don't listen much to her anymore because she makes fine art more than she makes music and I find her rather unpleasant sounding most of the time. I love Kate's deep empathy. The one thing that puts me off to her sometimes is that so much of her music is ultimately about dark subject matter and she can get a little depressing to me.

FF THE TORI AMOS TROLL

Worse than the Tori troll is the one who keeps postings video links to artists who've covered Kate. Pat Benatar? FFS.

Bow down bitches!

161 Father Lucifer from Pele, at the very end of the song she could not be more spot on doing the best Kate Bush impression imaginable. In fact there I think she was doing it sarcastically to go after all the critics and skeptics like saying “you want Kate Bush? I’ll give you Kate Bush.” But that album I always thought had a very The Dreaming feel to it where as I don’t quite agree with the person who reviewed Choir Girl from Spin Magazine calling it a modern day Hounds of Love. It’s not as ignorant as that punk ass 19 year old frat creep giving Liz Phairs s/t ‘03 album a ZERO out of 100 and calling it Avril Lavigne cosplay more or less. This guy did give Tori an 8 out of 10 in the review and I’d agree but still far from Hounds

A tremendous title track that’s oddly underrated

Perhaps it’s the incestuous content that make people uneasy

Or the implied suicide

Yeah it's a great song R166. I also like this version by Julie Covington, who was of course in Rock Follies with international star Rula Lenska.

I just found out recently that this French adaptation of ‘The Infant Kiss’ was specifically meant for the French Canadian market

I think Kate’s rather English school girl’s French pronunciation est très adorable

I really really hope this resurgence gives Kate the impetus to release a new album. It’s been a long 11 years since 50 Words For Snow.

I think I need to give 50 Words ... another go. I bought The Kick Inside after seeing her doing the red dress version of Wuthering Heights on Countdown, our Australian version of Top of the Pops, all those decades ago and have bought every album since and love them all in their different ways but just never got into 50 Words. Maybe it was that Aerial was so good and 50 Words seemed somehow underwhelming in comparison. So, after a couple of listens, I went back to the ones I knew well and loved. So I guess it is worth revisiting?

Yes, it would be great if this blip on the radar brought about a surge of interest across the board.

I love Kate. She's one of my favorite artists—but I haven't engaged with her music after, I'd say, This Woman' Work. King of the Mountain does nothing for me, and Aerial and the snow album are just too sleepy for me. I'll try again.

It would be great if she made a new album with some new life.

This is probably sexist, but here goes: it seems like albums made by mothers while their kids are young are often saccharine and sentimental. This was the period when Tori had her great lull, and as soon as her daughter went off to school, she got a creative edge back. Native Invader and Ocean to Ocean are inspired.

Maybe now that Bertie is all grown up and Kate has had time to build up her creative reserves, she might have something to say.

If not, maybe just a one-off single telling everyone to fuck themselves for attacking her a few years ago because she said it was great having a female prime minister!

Hauntingly beautiful

I love (most of) Aerial R171 - maybe give Joanii, How to Be Invisible, Sunset (I love when it speeds up into the Spanish influenced bit around the four minute mark), Nocturn and the anthemic title track a revisit. I even like 'lovely lovely lovely lovely Bertie' - I think it's the pretty melody and the sort of Elizabethan sound to it, like some Tudor court song. In the meantime I'll give 50 Words another go.

I was lucky enough to score tickets, after hours online and having pretty much given up, to one of the 2014 concerts and it could have done with a lot less lovely lovely Bertie. In fact no Bertie, other than as a back-up singer, would have been ideal.

I assume most fans know about the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever but for those who have yet to encounter it, here's a few hundred Aussies twirling around in their red dresses on the Melbourne moors.

I heartily disagree, I find Aerial one of my top three KB albums, with “Bertie” being the only weak link. Side A is great but Side B, A Sky of Honey is one of the best things she’s ever done and it builds up a thunderously rollicking climax. I love it. “A Coral Room” still breaks my heart, too.

^ it was R171 I was disagreeing with, not the previous poster

R170 definitely give 50 Words another spin or two. It’s kind of a curiosity piece, and very stripped back and below. “Lake Tahoe” is stunning and “Among Angels” is a masterpiece. “Wild Man” is kind of a bohemian bop. The only thing that drags it down is the inclusion of Elton John, who is simply too hammy to ever be allowed on a Kate Bush album.

^ stripped back and *mellow. Gotta stop typing in a hurry.

Personally I found that ‘Wuthering Heights’ the novel has a really strange and uneven structure, because to me, the book reaches its climax when the ghost of Cathy appears outside the window, and gets her hands brutally rubbed on the broken window pane. Truly haunting and sadistic

But that’s like just the first quarter of the novel

And from that point in, it’s anti-climax all the way, with all the tedious narrative about who loves whom/who hates whom/who marries whom on and on and on

The novel briefly comes back to life, ironically, in that last scene where Heathcliff goes truly berserk and dies, wet and alone and presumably reunited with Cathy at long last

She should do a husky sequel to her first single and call it Withering Lows.

Yes R178 the power of that opening section is never really matched in the rest of the novel. The bit where Lockwood rubs Cathy's wrist back and forth across the broken window glass is strong stuff.

For a bit of light relief, here's Psycho Bitches, a British comedy's, take on the bickering Brontes. It's much shorter than their novels and (I think) very funny. If you like it, Mary Queen of Scots, Eva Braun (as done by Catherine Tate) and Mary Pickford are also worth a look.

The only album of hers I couldn’t get into was the Sensual World. I felt it only got the praise it did because of the masterpiece it followed up. In fact I even found myself agreeing with Beavis and Butthead when they totally ripped her music vid from that album to shreds, think it was Never Be Mine. It reminds me of when Jack Blacks character totally tears apart one of my faves, Belle and Sebastian in High Fidelity. They purposely used the worst song off that album to get to where poor Jack Black had to insult their, at the time, latest album. I thought the opposite reaction with the Red Shoes and thought that was a more triumphant record that got a lot of backlash from people that felt it was nothing more than a duets record. Her best songs off that album were all her solo. In fact she hated what Prince did to her song in their duet but most people felt Prince was an absolute demon in the studio, like a slightly lesser Phil Spector when it came to his mentality.

R161 with Björk , her old band the Sugarcubes was much more highly influenced by the dreamy jangliest elements of the Cocteau Twins and the same could be said for other trip hop acts like Massive Attack who famously worked with Cocteaus lead singer Liz Fraser (especially known for singing about her ex Jeff Buckley’s passing on “Teardrop”). While you certainly hear elements of Kate’s music In Björk as well I’d say Tori still takes the cake but she did an amazing job at it. Once the artsy fartsy avant-garde composition piece artists like Joanna Newsom and the Laura Marlings and Julia Holters and Grouper and Mitski came into the fray you started to appreciate the more accessible artists like Tori and Goldfrapp and Bat for Lashes and longed for those type of acts that didn’t take their art to that snobfest New Yorker or Pitchfork level where they’re alienating a huge chunk of Kates initial fan base.

R182 I love her and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but your mention of Pitchfork made me think of Fiona Apple. I think she's interesting and innovative musically and she's what I would have to classify as a "wordsmith," using a vocabulary like wrought iron.

But I find it really frustrating that Pitchfork, for example, and pretty much all critics appreciate her as a genius much in the way Kate has become respected in the UK in retrospect.

It's frustrating to me because, to me, Kate and Tori are miles 'deeper.' While Fiona's compositions and lyrics are inventive, ultimately, she only sings about lovesongs and about being anxious/depressed/personally troubled and working to do battle with her depressive moods. That's it, nothing else.

Kate writes whimsical songs about government conspiracy theories involving an inventor who discovered vital sexual energy and also made it rain and then died in prison. She writes about being a ghost haunting a man. She writes about being a man who waits powerlessly outside a hospital room while his wife is in danger of dying while giving birth. She writes a series of songs in which she imagines the process of dying.

Tori writes about Judeo-Christian, Gnostic, Mesoamerican, American Indian, Celtic and Norse mythologies, about ancient languages, about psychedelics, critically about religious orthodoxies and authorities while still writing respectfully about spirituality, she writes about cosmology and—just so much more. I'm not comparing her writing on a line level to that of Shakespeare, but she addresses the breadth of human experience to the same degree Shakespeare did.

Fiona, like most pop artists, writes love songs and self-help songs. I don't know. I think the snobby critics should put some thought into what songwriters actually sing about and give "weirdos" like Tori, Kate, Björk et al more respectful attention for their efforts, if nothing else. It seems like all they want is all love songs all the time.

Fiona says she always listened to Get Out of My House and Jig of Life when she was depressed.

Kate knocks pass-around bottom Harry Styles off the top spot. A victory for real music over reality tv winners who've sucked cock for a contract.

Please, Harry isn’t a pass around bottom, he just kits himself like a ridiculous tranny and pretends he’s “QUEER” to gay bait.

Really glad Kate, an actual talent, kicked him off the top spot. I love the song and have for years.

Add this to your playlist Harry. And feel free to do a cover...

🎵 He’s too busy hitting the Vaseline music 🎶 You’re welcome Elastica.

I eat huge piles of SHIT!

What a terrible song..🤢🤢🤢🤢

Mama Rabbit for da WIN!

Even straight brodudes aren’t immune to Kate

^ it’s really quite A.Ma.Zing the range of people that this song appeals to, across age/gender/sexual orientation

Madonna’s probably going crazy that a fellow 63 year old woman can get a #1 for a 37 year old song with no effort at all. Meanwhile, she recently remixed Frozen (a 22 year old song) and made a new video for it and it didn’t even chart!

R188: I love that line about Vaseline lolz , especially Kate’s little pat on her *bum*

Although these days it will have been cancelled as ‘homophobic’, which is too bad. Seems like people have completely lost their sense of humor

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Madonna already had Material Girl and, I think, Angel on the show the previous season. I think the former in particular got a big boost. The reason Running Up That Hill has exploded, aside from being a stunning song, is that it’s featured as an intrinsic part of the story and used in multiple episodes. It’s one of the best uses of a piece of pop music I’ve ever seen on a Tv show. I had no idea Kate had only previously had one other UK number one. Justice is served, albeit 3 decades later :)

Has Madonna so much as even referenced Kate Bush in any interview? She knows who she is clearly with her being such a fan of her heavily influenced alterna Goddesses Björk, PJ Harvey and dreampop pioneers the Cocteau Twins. In fact she was in the running to works on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine before they picked Liz Fraser instead. She signed Alanis to her old record label. She did some lame bit on SNL referencing Sinead O’ Conner. It’s like she’s purposely weaving and dodging the one person you’d think she’d have the most admiration for and kept her on her toes. She didn’t have the genius of a Prince who adored Kate, but there were subtle experimenting arty moments you can hear particularly in records as Like A Prayer, Ray of Light and I think Björk herself produced a few songs on Bedtime Stories. Is it a jealousy thing? She lives in Britain so she probably hears some rumblings going on but I’m just speculating.

R197 Uhh…but that didn’t bring those songs back to the charts.

Madonna is going insane that another 63 year old singer is getting all the attention with no effort at all!😂

[quote]Has Madonna so much as even referenced Kate Bush in any interview?

No. Madonna has always been threatened by her contemporaries/women her own age despite all her cries of sexism and how women have it so hard. The only female singers she will acknowledge are the ones young enough to be her daughters or granddaughters because she wants to latch onto the attention they get.

R198 and R200, see if the below link works. During Madge's Downton Abbey phase she was prattling on about how exciting England was, its eccentricities, culture etc. She referenced Kate, albeit briefly in one of those interviews- in a positive way. That was peak Madge and Kate was either still reclusive or might have had released Aerial.

Another thread about a female artist where she can't be celebrated in her own right, but has to be celebrated with comparisons to Madonna.

Groundbreaking.

Most people on here R202 are celebrating Kate as an artist in her own right and even saying she's incomparable to her peers. What I don't get is people posting links to acts covering Kate. You can't or should never attempt to cover an artist so unique. The Pat Benatar fans are fucking hilarious, or delusional, I can't decide.

Mandarin cover of Moving

And the original here R204

For R204

R204: Kate’s influence is cross cultural and cross boundaries

R201 Was she there to be “inspired” (copy)?

I love that the song, first verse in particular, is basically Kate asking a guy if he’d like to know what it feels like to have a cock inside him. It’s subtly done, though.

Does Kate have a gay fanbase? Does she acknowledge them?

Now that I've seen this season of Stranger Things, I think the song was used really poorly. And by that I don't mean the context in which they used it, but how they featured it sonically. You never really get to hear the song in a way that thrills you or makes you sit up and say- wow, what is THAT? So I am super puzzled at the renaissance the song is having, even though I am very pleased about it. Had I watched the show on Day One of it dropping, I would never have predicted this would happen based on the way they played it.

I love this special single mix of ‘The Big Sky’

R203 Kate Bush shouldn’t be covered and up until Miley I always thought Cocteau Twins COULDN’T be covered but she must have made up her own lyrics. I could totally picture as much as I don’t ever want to hear it, Cyrus covering Kate now since she’s on this female rocker trip covering Mazzy Star, Joan Jett and Bikini Kill in addition. So get ready for the trashiest Deal With God you’ll ever hear covered by Ms. Trailer Park Overall herself.

.,.,

According to BBC News, Kate earned £1m in royalties last week based off of RUTH downloads. You go gurl!

This is a fan made clip, so the sounds weren’t ideal. If possible, listen to the CD version of ‘Running Up the Hill’ on the ‘Before the Dawn’ album, 2014. The drums are especially energising and exciting

Thanks R216. I still feel very cheated that Kate never released a dvd/blu ray of the concert. Audio alone is not enough for me.

London Olympics 2012 live performance of ‘Running Up that Hill’

^ sorry not a live performance, just a remix

^ Info

I both love and hate that "Running Up That Hill," a song about empathy between the sexes, was probably chosen by the Olympics committee because its title sounds vaguely athletic. It's ridiculous and yet perfectly bureaucratic.

So strange that film footage of Before the Dawn was never released. I was there for one of the earlier concerts and the film cameras were evident. I have no interest in a live album. Part of the draw was seeing her and the stage show she'd put on. She is a notorious perfectionist so there's obviously aspects of the footage she's unhappy with.

R222 Maybe it was all for this?

Or maybe they planned on making similar videos from the footage and there was no demand or she just wasn't into it?

There would definitely be demand R223 but you might be right about the other part- she jus wasn't that into it.

R224 There'd definitely be demand right now. Her official YouTube account has uploaded four versions of Running Up That Hill in eight days. Mayve they will post a live one from 2014 if they can produce it to her satisfaction during the zeitgeist.

Lick my ass!

Let’s see if this long vertical form of new[ish] YouTube format work on DL; it’s one of the 4 versions recently uploaded that r225 mentioned

^ as expected, DL refuses to play the new and improved YouTube clip: sigh…

Regarding her not releasing the filmed show, the rumour I recall hearing was that Kate was self conscious about her weight. That would be really sad if true, because I think she looked fantastic. But, as someone who has struggled with BDD, I can sadly relate.

Just heard the song in a Chaturbate show. It’s officially everywhere!

R230: that’s wonderful!

Live on Wogan, 1985

There’s a fantastic new remix of it used on the trailer for S4P2.

Do you guys enjoy Stranger Things? I watched the first season because people insisted it was the most brilliant TV series and I thought it was stupid. I love a lot of sci-fi, I like fantasy stories that aren't stuck in fantasy tropes (wizards, dragons, etc.), and I generally dislike comic book movies, which I find boring—savior hero character versus "I will destroyyyyy youuu BWAAAHAHAHAAAA!" masked villain, etc.

Stranger Things felt like a pastiche of a Spielberg childhood-wonder movie to me, which was distracting, and then it showed the monster, which looked stupid to me and I lost interest in the show. I have been surprised people remain interested in it and I'd give the first season a C- and criticize it for relying too much on Spielberg imitation if I were grading it—but the Kate association makes me want to reconsider. Do you guys like it? If so, what do you like about it?

I love ST and I’m generally pretty picky with what I watch. It took a few episodes for s1 to hook me, but once it did I found it amazing; the plot and pacing are well judged, I grew to love the characters and actors, I adore the way they’ve recreated the mid 80’s and how immersive Hawkins feels. It’s more or les stayed strong ever since, although some people aren’t sure about s3 and think they overdid the humour. If anything s4 might be the best yet; it captivated me from the start and has done a great job juggling multiple plot strands. Im not generally a fan of horror, so this technically shouldn’t be my thing, but I definitely think it’s one of the best shows of the past few years.

I don't dig this song

Kate was interviewed on the BBC's Woman's Hour today.

R235 Thanks. I like a lot of occult and supernatural horror, but horror movies and shows with silly looking monsters just don't do it for me. I wish the show had kept the monster in the imagination.

Kate speaking at R237 is as momentous as Running Up That Hill getting to no.1!

OMG this seems to be one of the ‘Babooshka’ TikTok things mentioned in the interview at r237

Rolling the ball, rolling the ball…

A fan/DJ self-made remix

Some Scottish dude, did it back in January 2021, before the current craze

I’ve always found it interesting that a person of opposite gender covers a hit, sorta a musical role reversal. It’s important that they don’t change the lyrics, especially pronouns: this is one of those rather rare instances where pronouns do make a difference lolz

Hands free in 1979!

Is it still #1 or did it drop down this week?

R244 Wow! A headset microphone in 1979?! Was she the first person to make it popular?

R245 it’s number one for a second week!

R246 Yes, she asked for it to be created because she's a dancer and needed to move her arms and hands around.

R247 That’s great!

R248 Wow! This woman really was a trailblazer.

Nina Hagen I always thought both looked like her and maybe influenced her certain mannerisms. In fact, I wish I could remember one particular songwriters name. Rodney Bingenheimer plays her a lot and she did a duet with David Bowie maybe a year or two before he passed. Kristen I think is her first name (NOT Kristy McCall)I’ll see if I can find her but she is like the total lovechild of Nina Hagen and Kate Bush particularly when Kate was more animated maybe around the late 70s.

Kristeen Young is her name. Or Kate Hagen as I call her.

I heard on the radio today that it's made $2.5 million for Bush since Stranger Things.

I heard a radio interview she did last week and her speaking voice is as soft and lovely as ever. I'm sure she can still sing. I hope she gets a creative spark and makes another album, perhaps even one inspired by Running Up That Hill.

Tori's 2021 album Ocean to Ocean is one of her best recent albums and it feels like a mature echo of Little Earthquakes in the best ways. It's the only work she's done that has been at all reminiscent of prior work.

I don't necessarily want Kate to make another Hounds of Love, but yes I do.

When we look back in years’ time, I think we’ll see how prescient and apposite the lyrics of ‘Running Up that Hill’ was, for the summer of 2022, the summer when Roe v Wade was overturned

It will be the Theme Song, the Soundtrack of this turbulent time we’re living in

If the straight men who wanted to ban abortion rights switched places with women...well, I would support the idea of women, having switched places with them, sexual assaulting them because it's the only way in which I can imagine any of those men ever acquiring any empathy whatsoever. They'd have to be terrorized to feel what women feel. Maybe Kate will make a deal with the devil next time to show men that "it does hurt me—do you want to feel how it feels?"

^MARY!

I was trying to find out when the Wombat version at r254 was uploaded to YouTube, but of course that information has been removed

Do you guys find it as annoying, and as pointless, as I do? What is YouTube trying to accomplish by not letting people know the date the clip was uploaded?

Right now, the best one can do is to look at the oldest comment, and guesstimate from there. It’s so unnecessary

Both equally cute

^ more here

I'm both grossed out and confused by the Millennials and Zoomers who strip off their clothes and post 10-second videos of themselves smiling half naked while Kate Bush sings. Are these people completely braindead, or what are they trying to communicate?

R259 It does say the video was uploaded 4 days ago

R263: OIC.

So you’ve to clicked on the Uploader, in this case ‘Triple J’, and go into his/her YouTube homepage, in order to see the dates of the various videos uploaded

Hmm, the date used to be available on the same page as the video, so I guess they’ve made it one step further

It’s actually much more complicated. I just clicked on an old video by Childish Gambino, which is from a few years back, also uploaded by Triple J

My god, there are quite a few videos on Triple J’s homepage, and I can’t imagine wading through all his uploads just to find one from a few years ago

Am I doing something wrong? I’m viewing this on an iPad, and it shouldn’t be this different to find the date of upload, right?

R211, I think because so few songs today are cinematic sounding in scope, that the kids are hearing something completely different (for them) and somewhat intangible, which is intriguing.

I'm still tickled about the Olympics using it because it's called running up that hill. That is so stupid.

My fave cover of Running Up That Hill is by Chromatics.

It didn’t manage #1 on Billboard Hot 100 unfortunately.

[quote]I'm still tickled about the Olympics using it because it's called running up that hill. That is so stupid.

The Olympic closing ceremony had countless British legends. The Beatles, David Bowie, Queen, The Kinks, Annie Lennox, Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, The Who and Kate Bush.

Kate was asked to attend but hadn't performed live for year, so like Bowie they used her music in the show without her performing.

Wuthering Heights was not going to be chosen and Running Up That Hill was the obvious choice, not because it has running in the title but because it's a uniquely classic song that lends itself to a spectacular dance routine.

BBC Radio have been playing the song multiple times daily for months, across all channels, and I'm thoroughly fucking sick of it, despite liking the song and admiring Kate as an artist. They've overplayed it to the point of ruining it.

This Jenny Abrahamson interpretation is worthy of consideration, m'lad

*Jennie

More Aussie gay hunk feeeling ‘Running Up that Hill’, except this time via Placebo, rather than Kate

Here's a Before the Dawn performance from 2014!

The Ninth Wave live 2014

Third week at No.1 in UK....

I’m sick of this song. I’m tired of the 2nd coming of Kate bush pussy. Go away

Kate Bush is Queen of the Universe you cretin. Begone with you.

I don’t think she can assume her song persona at this stage of her life. It wouldn’t work.

r278 go back to your stereotype clubby top 40 generic, manufactured, girly pop whore, whatever your 14 year old niece is into bs. Go kiss up to your Kim Petra’s and DJ Kats, Dual Lips, Meg Thee Stallion, Miley “Trailer Park Overall” Cyrus. That or you’re just another angry Madge fan who knew no other artist on the planet made her more jel than the queen of all things art pop herself. So go be her whipping boy cause nobody is falling for it. Now go back to your Radio Disney, well when you get up cause they way your throw your little hissyfit tanrums it’s well past your bedtime.

Mary!

R269: Kate has been such an unapologetically *English* artist that she’ll always be more popular in the UK as well as British Common Wealth markets.

I mean, compare her materials with that of Harry Style, who while English but with a much more ‘globalised’ [read: American] sound and positioning, and you can see the drastic difference

That ‘Running Up to Hill’ can even hit as high as No.4 on the US Billboard chart, 37 years after its initial release, is therefore nothing short of a miracle, I think

I mean, if you listened to, say, the way Adele sing, you’d have no idea that she’s English [unless you’d read it somewhere else first]

Not so Kate though

Thr Beatles, Elton John, Boy George, Led Zeppelin...there's hardly a shortage of English/British musicians that have made it big globally.

I don't think Kate's Englishness has limited her appeal. I think it's her eccentricity and expressionism and unconventional songwriting and singing. Wuthering Heights is not pretty to listen to. Nor are Sat In Your Lap and many other of her songs. Her videos, including her wacky expressions and her mime-style movements in many are just avant garde no matter the country.

Some songs like There Goes a Tenner and Army Dreamers have very British lyrics that don't mean much to American ears without investigating them, but most of the rest of her music is just very unorthodox and certainly was never intended for mainstream popular radio appeal. It's fine art, to her credit. Lady Gaga (who I like) presents herself as a performance artist but most of her music is formulated for popular appeal, and much of Kate's is intentionally difficult to access.

R285: but that’s my whole point, her eccentricity *is* part of her Englishness. After all eccentricity is prized as something rather positive in the English tradition, but less so in other cultures

It is appreciated these days, R286, but the British press, and entertainment shows made fun of her a lot in the 70s and 80s. They made fun of her high voice and dance moves, and when she started taking four years between albums they frequently reported that reclusive Kate had gained four stone and was hiding from the press. The music press appreciated The Dreaming, but the regular press declared it to be evidence that she had gone barmy.

The British press was really nasty to female artists in the 80s. At one point in a review of Alison Moyet's Raindancing they said that while the album was decent, Alison reminded them of a belch.

R287: I know right re: how beastly British press could/can be, as I’m reading ‘Under the Ivy’ by Graeme Thomson

There’s a bit about Kate being so annoyed by anEnglish paparazzi during a public appearance that she gave his bum a good kick - I thought that was quite hilarious

Too English ? What a load of shit. Lol

Wuthering Heights couldn't have been a breakthrough hit in any country but the UK, I'll give you that. A crazy witchy English song about a crazy ghostly English novel is...very English, and I mean that as a compliment.

Kate sold albums but not singles. Running Up That Hill was a rare singles hit for her.

To compare her to female artists in the 80s, Kate had 2 top 10 hits (3 if you count Peter Gabriel) and 5 top ten albums, 3 of which were number 1. Kate Bush was similar artists to Sade who didn't have hits (only Your Love Is King made top 10 in the UK) but sold huge numbers of albums.

Samantha Fox (!) had more top 10 singles in the 80s than Kate or Sade.

Kim Wilde had 8 top 10 hits and 2 top 10 albums. Bananarama had 10 top 10 singles and 2 top 10 albums. Alison Moyet had 6 top 10 singles and 2 top 10 albums.

I’m over this hairy Bush bitch

There are plenty of other threads for you to toddle off to, R292.

[quote]but that’s my whole point, her eccentricity *is* part of her Englishness. After all eccentricity is prized as something rather positive in the English tradition, but less so in other cultures

Tori Amos said the record label she signed with packed her off to the UK for that reason: too kooky for the US but perfect for over there.

Kate Bush is what I call a credible artist. Once upon a time, record companies had the regular pop chart darlings making them money and then the credible artists who gave the record companies some sort of bragging rights for releasing "real" music.

That model vanished quite some time ago, and record labels care only about sales these days.

Toddle my shit

Well the record labels certainly don't care about music anymore. Forget even lyrics—music alone has been abandoned in favor of EDM beats and electronic orchestration and AutoTune. It's pretty weird, but the public eats it up.

People love shit

Some British songs just don't seem to make it across the Atlantic no matter how catchy or commercial they are. I get the argument that Kate Bush is not only very English but also not obviously commercial, though Wuthering Heights was huge in Australia, as well as New Zealand (both Commonwealth countries) and all across Europe. But a couple of songs from further back that made no impact in the US and that are very commercial (and great songs to boot) are Steve Harley's Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile) and the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset. And it works both ways with some big US hits having no impact outside of the States. I guess here in Australia we get a bit from everywhere and can at least lay claim to giving Blondie and the Motels their first hits (In the Flesh and Total Control). And we gave you Air Supply!

^ and let’s not forget Savage Garden darling

I know with the artist Kris Young half will say she doing her best Nina Hagenisms and the other Kate Bush. I thought Kate Bush and thought it was actually her and fanboyed out like a bitch when I heard her duet with David Bowie again thinking it was Kate. I always heard Helena Bonham Carter got her inspiration for her character in Sweeney Todd from Bush and Depp from Bowie.

Kristeen Young = a little goes a very long way with her. Her new album though is pure shit.

Shitty song then, still shitty.

r303 how you liking the new Madonna album or single ? Go on about your favorites and tell us Mr. music expert who we should be listening to instead. Go ahead, platforms all yours.

Big question: anyone know if the orchestral mixes of Running Up That Hill are featured on the Stranger Things 4 score soundtrack? I browsed the track listing but can’t see it unless it’s under another name. I was sure they’d be included, they sound amazing and I want and NEED them!

Anyone?

I just googled Running Up That Hill Orchestral Version and found it

R306 thanks amigo, but that’s a cover version, not what I’m looking for. I’m wanting an official release :p

It is Youtube but not on the soundtrack. Kate tends to be pretty protective of her work when it comes to that kind of thing. Hell, even the album version of RUTH, which is on the soundtrack, is not available on the Apple Music version of the album. The Separate Ways mixes are, but not RUTH.

Sorry, I meant to include a link to the official TOTEM Remix used in the episode

There are soooooo many ripoff/cover versions on iTunes now, many of them selling themselves as Stranger Things remixes with random vocalists who are decidedly not Kate.

I expect after all this hype, Kate and the show producers are probably negotiating how to split proceeds of an official remix release.

I remember when Mamas & the Papas “California Dreamin’” was the hip IT song to cover especially slowed down raspy Cat Power cosplay lady songwriter versions. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that RUTH as the kids are now saying,😝 was gonna top that by miles. Maybe I should have seen it coming the away fellow alt legends the Pixies and their hit “Where is My Mind” had been making such a resurgence.

I wanna be Kate!

[quote] LIPS IS A TRANS-INCLUSIVE WOMEN'S CHOIR. WE’VE BEEN TAKING UP SPACE AND MAKING A NOISE SINCE 2009.

[quote] FORMED IN 2009, LIPS HAS GROWN FROM A SMALL GROUP OF WOMEN WHO LOVE TO SING, TO A 100-STRONG MUSICAL FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH.

[quote]Led by dynamic musical director Jessie Maryon Davies and accompanied by an all-female* live band, Lips create a wall of sound like nothing else.

[quote]*Lips is a women’s choir for people who self-identify as female, trans and gender non-conforming.

More about Lips Choir

New York Post

Oops please ignore r315

I like the arrangement and the band backing the song, which is quite avant- garde but I’m not really feeling the girl’s singing

^ I think you should always find a singer of opposite sex to cover famous songs like this - save you from being compared unfavourably, which is almost guaranteed to happen

I quite like the beginning and especially the end

Never a fan of the song in the 80s but happy to hear it in 2022

Hearing Rock Me Amadeus and Pass the Dutchie on the show was nostalgic. Two of my faves. Even bought the 45 single of Rock Me Amadeus back in the day

I love that Kate and one of her best songs are getting so much attention. I'm annoyed by the way people are capitalizing on it. I appreciate a good cover, or even a good-hearted mediocre cover by someone who appreciates a song, but people are churning shit out just to make a buck. I hope she is getting publishing royalties off of every cover version. I'm also seriously weirded out by the social media whores who are stripping down and posing in videos with her song playing. I don't even understand the sensibility there. It makes me feel like I am in an alien world to see some of these TikTok and Instagram videos of random people standing there and making stupid expressions while a song plays. Has a whole generation been lobotomized?

I've never liked this song. And I love 80s music.

It’s one of the best songs of the 80’s bar none.

Not interested in covers, I just want them to release the new mixes used on Stranger Things, it sounds amazing as an orchestral banger.

It doesn't look like the Stranger Thing version is available on either the score album (Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein) or the official soundtrack.

Ryan P is on the gratuitous-sexy-Instaho-exploitation-of-Kate-Bush bandwagon.

I happened to have the radio on when I was driving around outside of Boston two weeks ago- lo and behold, one of the hot hits station was playing, "RUTH"- loved hearing it randomly on the radio again, but was weirded out that it was that popular to be on a hot hits station, rather than a retro station.

Omg

My sister mainly likes male rockers and she mostly rejects my favorite (Tori) and thinks Kate is absolutely awful and a bonkers bonanza.

She told me probably six months ago that she keeps hearing a Kate Bush song come on a satellite radio station and "it's actually a really good song." I told her it's Running Up That Hill, and a lot of her music is great. She rolled her eyes. Then she told me about two months ago that she loves a Kate Bush song that keeps playing on the 80s station, that it's REALLY good. I told her it's Running Up That Hill and that Kate has a lot of great songs. She rolled her eyes.

It's funny; we went to Amsterdam together in 2015 and my phone's alarm clock was set to play Running Up That Hill and it drove her nuts. But it has slowwwwly seeped into her consciousness. I think she'll admit she likes Kate and Tori by age 70 or so.

I am hoping that with her resurgence this year that maybe 2022 will be the year the world in introduced to Dame Catherine Bush.

Don't get your hopes up, R330. The Honours system is fucked.

Yeah, I know. They also may have crossed her off the list forever because she asked the Queen for her autograph for Bertie when she got her OBE in 2005. She did get a CBE after that though.

Maybe more people are familiar with her now, and will vote her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year.

I never hold out hope for that type of recognition for Kate, she deserves it, but the chances are slim.

R329 are you really that stupid?? It’s not Kate Bush’s music she rolls her eyes at. It’s the fact the suggestion is coming from YOU. She and likely others are off put by your fan girl or obsessive devotion to Kate Bush and I’m sure by Tori Amos (she’s an acquired taste).

There is a similar post on one of the running up that tired hill threads where some douche bullies his nieces into listening Kate Bush music while he holds them captive inside his car. He orders them to be quiet if they try to talk and insists that listening to Kate Bush is important. Talk about turning two people against you and your musical choices.

I want my funeral to consist of everyone I know being forced to listed the The Ninth Wave in its entirety.

No eulogy, or anything like that. Just The Ninth Wave.

It’s back up to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Unbelievable.

^#1 next week

r334 well it beats the whole reverse direction angle where the stereotypical bottom queen diva listens to the same type of music his 14 year old niece loves. That’s what I think of when I think of their fangirling for the latest generic, manufactured, top 40 girl pop “sensation” flavor of the month.

I agree in that porn pop singers like Cardi b etc are sex performers.

This song sucked then. It sucks now. More proof this generation is beyond basic.

I think you may be the one who is basic, R340. It was a great song then, it is a great song now. It is a complex song, with unusual intervals, dissonances that amp up the emotion of the lyrics, and is in C Minor - which is very unusual for a pop song. The fact that it is experiencing such success now is really incredible.

There was a thread about Britney warbling along to Baby One More time. That would probably be more to your liking.

Running up that hill…for Gorgeous Hair!

This version is so soothingly gorgeous

Throwback: Kate and some cute kitties

^ the one in front looks so serious

Does she play cello or just pose and dance with them?

R346: I can’t be sure anymore, I think the pic at r344 came during the period of ‘Never for Ever’ [1980]; and as far as I know, she doesn’t play the cello. Her specialty is obviously the piano/keyboard

Up to #3! Will it hit number 1, or will Lizzo keep her at bay?

[quote] C Minor - which is very unusual for a pop song.

Is it? 70s disco music was almost exclusively minor/modal keys and jazz chords/progressions.

Some will like this.

Running up the Pole

Damn, he’s hot.

R352: and he’s rather flexible @yorgemartinezz

Running up that Lake

This song is still in Billboard Hot 100 Top 5. It's been TWO months. I thought its reappearance on the chart was a fluke but it is hanging tough. Kate is getting her day in the sun. Is it eligible for any Grammys since it was first released in 1985?

This songs sucks and everyone is now a copycat sheep.

What ever happened to counter culture? What ever happened to going your own way?

This crap disgusts me.

R356 Kate is counterculture. Do you think she is mainstream pop? Are you out of your mind?

Kate is the Kook of All Kooks.

Just because one of her least unusual songs became popular 37 years after it was released does not mean she is a sheep. Of all musicians who have ever gone their own ways, she is among their frontrunners.

Kate Bush a copycat sheep???

It is to laugh.

By copycat sheep are you talking Siouxsie Sioux, Tori Amos, Sinead O Connor, Björk, PJ Harvey, Sarah McLaughlin, Liz Phair, St. Vincent, Goldfrapp, Bat For Lashes, Lykke Li, Grimes, Joanna Newsom, Kristeen Young, Fever Ray, Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple and countless others? If that’s the case and you’re referring to her as one of the most innovative, influential female icon legends in the game, you got it. Otherwise, you’re a nitwit who probably gets his latest girly pop flavor of the month generic top 40 talent free tramp from your 14 year old niece

Who about a porn version. Cuming Up That Hill

[quote]“The Longest TV Negotiation I Have Ever Seen”: Behind Kate Bush’s ‘Stranger Things’ Sync Deal

That was very interesting, thanks, R362.

Incredibly, RUTH is still at number 4 on the Billboard chart.

I’m still sad the orchestral versions of RUTH featuring on Stranger Things havent been released in an official capacity. I really hoped they’d be on the score.

"Oh, this is vegetables! This one is vegetables, too. This is sunflower seeds, sesame seeds. A bit like bird food!"

This song is stuck in my head

You could actually hear sniffling through out the theater....

Her music has been in my life since the 80's...

Running…

Amazing!

^ OMG sorry wrong vid wrong thread

Still in the top 5. I finally succumbed and bought the mp3

Interestingly, after dropping to number five, it is back at number 4 this week - also Harry Styles is back at number 1. Yesterday, a CD single was released with the original 45 artwork and tracking, Running Up that Hill and Under the Ivy, looks like it is only available from Rhino's website.

I am amazed that it has had such staying power on the US charts.

Winning combo: Muscles + Kate

^ it’s this remix