The Wild Reed: The Kate Bush Renaissance of 2022

Friday, June 10, 2022

The Kate Bush Renaissance of 2022

As a long-time admirer of the music of Kate Bush, I’m happy to see one of her songs not only currently the most listened to song on Spotify, i-Tunes, and Apple Music, but also topping charts worldwide. Indeed, it’s Number 1 in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Sweden; Number 2 in the United Kingdom; and Number 8 in the United States.

The song I’m referring to, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” isn’t a new recording by the revered and highly influential British singer-songwriter. Rather, it’s a 37-year-old track (and previous hit) from her 1985 album, Hounds of Love. Both the song and the album are topping charts and the playlists of music streaming platforms worldwide due to “Running Up That Hill” being featured in the current season of Netflix’s popular sci-fi/horror drama, Stranger Things.

Even here at The Wild Reed the Kate Bush resurgence is being felt; as currently, this blog’s most popular post, “The Dancer and the Dance,” is one that features the music video for “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).” As you’ll see below, this video’s choreography draws upon contemporary dance in a very beautiful and powerful way.

A “positive totem”

Nora Felder, music supervisor for Stranger Things, said she chose “Running Up That Hill” because it resonated with the pain and loss afflicting one of the show’s young characters, Max (Sadie Sink), and “could be very special for its powerful melodic flow and very poignant themes.”

The Washington Post reports that “after getting approval from series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, referred to collectively as the Duffer Brothers, Felder and her clearance coordinator reached out to Bush for permission to use the track. The singer is known to be picky with how her music is used, but turned out to be a fan of the show.”

Earlier this week, Kate made a rare public statement on her website, explaining how Stranger Things had given her iconic track a new lease of life. The series is set in the 1980s and combines high school coming of age antics with a sinister and violent supernatural plot. Music critic Martin Guttridge-Hewitt also notes that the show is “renowned for its 1980s stylisation, and has introduced new generations to seminal synth music by names including Jean-Michelle Jarre, John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder, and Vangelis, who sadly passed away last month.”

“When they approached us to use ‘Running Up That Hill,’” said Kate, “you could tell that a lot of care had gone into how it was used in the context of the story and I really liked the fact that the song was a positive totem for the character, Max. I’m really impressed by this latest [season of the show].” Kate also shared that she had watched all previous seasons with her family – husband Danny McIntosh and son Bertie.

A truly great album

I was 19 when Hounds of Love was first released, and I bought the album in a record store in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. At the time I was in my second year of college and living at St. Albert’s, a residential college on the campus of the University of New England. I remember the album was playing in the store when I went in to buy it. I’d already heard “Running Up That Hill” as it was the lead single from the album and had been released a month or so earlier. To this day I can recollect that the snippet of then-new Kate Bush music I heard as I made my purchase was the haunting “Watching You Without Me” from Side 2 of Hounds of Love.

Above: Celebrating my 20th birthday in October 1985, a month after the release of Hounds of Love. That’s a framed picture of Kate Bush on the shelf behind me! Yes, I was a big fan back in the day.

I didn’t have a record player at uni and so a girl I knew in my building at Albies let me tape the album using her stereo system. I was already a huge fan of Kate and her music, and Hounds of Love didn’t disappoint. Far from it. It was a tremendous commercial success and was and remains a truly great album. I’m elated that a new generation is discovering Kate and her music thanks to “Running Up That Hill” being used so prominently and powerfully in Stranger Things.

To celebrate all of this, I share tonight two pieces about what can only be described as the Kate Bush renaissance of 2022.

The first is an excerpt from an article by Elise Soutar that serves as a guide to Hounds of Love for those just discovering the music of Kate Bush.

The second is a wonderful piece by long-time fan Liam Hess, whose words about the positive impact of Kate Bush in his life could be my own; in fact, they kinda are! . . . Enjoy!

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An ominous opening synth note fades in, followed by an insistent layer of both live drums and a Linn drum machine that sounds like a call to arms, before a brighter, harsher Fairlight synth melody cuts through. Then, a voice once known for its floaty, elastic soprano range reintroduces itself, demanding rather than requesting: “It doesn’t hurt me / Do you wanna feel how it feels?”

In August 1985, those opening 30 seconds of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” noted the exact moment that Mark II of British singer Kate Bush’s career began. Though it was the first song written and recorded for Bush’s fifth studio album, Hounds of Love, and had obvious commercial potential while maintaining the haunting quality of her prior output, she had to convince her label, EMI, that it should be the lead single. . . . The song fulfilled Bush’s hopes of reviving interest in her work outside of her home country and devoted cult following elsewhere, peaking at #30 on the Billboard Charts and [thus] earning her her first American hit in seven years. . . . Her mission statement came in the form of a plea for empathy, a desire for gender swap via divine intervention and less of a love song than a call for respect she was due, both from her partner and an industry at large.

. . . Hounds of Love marked a creative rebirth for Bush, striking the most successful balance between experimentation and accessibility in her entire discography. That goes both figuratively and literally, as Bush packed one side with career-defining art-pop hits and the other with a conceptual suite following a drowning woman, chronicling her inner turmoil while she decides whether she wants to fight for her life or just let herself sink. Since that second half might have made you think twice about reading the rest of this (conversely, if it just completely sold you, you’re my kind of person), let’s start with Side A: “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” is followed by the title track, “The Big Sky,” “Mother Stands for Comfort,” and “Cloudbusting,” the album’s other most enduring hit, inspired by philosopher Wilhelm Reich’s relationship with his son Peter and bolstered by a stirring string march that builds to a sing-along crescendo for the ages.

In contrast to “Running Up That Hill”’s last-ditch effort to make a relationship work, “Cloudbusting” remains a transcendent anthem of optimism in even the most hopeless situations, sounding like the beginning of a new world after this one inevitably ends and Bush (singing as the younger Reich, facing his father’s imprisonment) insists that she “just know[s] that something good is gonna happen / I don’t know when / But just saying it could even make it happen.”

Four of the five tracks received elaborate videos, incorporating Bush’s love of dance and visual storytelling that she had honed over the course of her career and sharing the spoils with fans both new and old. It sounds like a product of its time, yet never comes off as dated. Combining masterful arrangements, booming percussion, quirky instrumental choices and career-best vocal performances (all on a self-produced album), Hounds of Love’s first side reintroduced Bush to pop listeners and proved she was a creative force to be reckoned with, something fans and most critics knew all along.

Now that she has your attention, why not turn the record over?

Pulling from styles across European music history, including samples of Gregorian chants and traditional Irish music, The Ninth Wave takes up the entirety of the album’s second side. It marked the first (but not last) time Bush attempted to create a cohesive musical story, its own purely auditory theatrical production with a guide to the action written out on the album’s original inner sleeve, made up of diverse songs that could also stand on their own. In her own words, Bush envisioned The Ninth Wave as “a film, that’s how I thought of it . . . the idea is that they’ve been on a ship and they’ve been washed over the side so they’re alone in this water. And I find that horrific imagery.” Once Bush’s narrator is knocked over the edge and left to freeze (“And Dream of Sheep,” “Under Ice”), she’s forced to reckon with her past mistakes, watch her loved ones in the present worry about her disappearance and argue with her future self, who demands she give herself a chance to live (“Waking the Witch,” “Watching You Without Me” and “Jig Of Life,” respectively), which she eventually does, vowing to be a better person going forward (“Hello Earth,” “The Morning Fog”). It’s a perfect culmination of the bold musical styles Bush had embraced up to that point, marrying her artsy oddball tendencies to a talent for moving storytelling. Can you imagine any of her contemporaries pulling off something similar?

– Elise Soutar
Excerpted from “A Beginner’s Guide to Kate Bush
for Stranger Things Fans”
Paste
June 1, 2022

W’ve all been there. It might be a book you read at a formative time in your life, or a film you hold especially close to your heart. Then, whether due to a social media trend or a mention in a hit TV show, that same cultural artifact is suddenly everywhere, with many professing their surprise at just how brilliant the artist who made it truly is. And even though you know it isn’t the nicest thing to feel, your first instinct is: Where have you all been?

So it was for many over the past few days as they realized one of their most beloved musicians – the iconic British singer-songwriter Kate Bush – had become a Gen Z sensation after her 1985 track “Running Up That Hill” was featured on a recent episode of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things. (The needle drop comes in after one of the show’s main characters, Sadie Sink’s Max, realizes that playing your favorite song will ward off one of the Upside Down’s most nefarious monsters.)

Over the weekend, the song shot to the top of the U.S. iTunes charts, with the show’s largely teenage fanbase taking to Twitter and TikTok to post about their new musical discovery from decades past. Others, however – notably long-time Bush fans of a certain generation, who have patiently sat through many decades of radio silence from a musician notorious for taking long hiatuses and doing minimal press – rolled their eyes. “How could you not know about the genius of Kate Bush already?” appeared to be the consensus from many on Twitter.

A disclaimer: Anyone who knows me knows that I have a borderline pathological obsession with Bush and her music. An important memory for me was seeing the video for her breakout 1978 track “Wuthering Heights,” the piano-led ballad with its allusions to Emily Brontë, bonkers key changes, and infamously acrobatic vocals, while watching a music video channel (remember those?) as a kid. Seeing Bush, who trained in contemporary dance, twirl and wave her arms through a spectral white mist in a floaty batwing dress, her eyes wide with urgency, I was mesmerized.

I would go on to discover the entirety of Bush’s eclectic catalog, from the lyrically complex vignettes of her early albums Lionheart and Never for Ever, to what is arguably her masterpiece, the thrillingly experimental 1982 record The Dreaming. When Bush would deliver one of her rare missives, or announce a new release, I’d scour online message boards to join the conversation and share my excitement. One of my greatest regrets in life – no exaggeration here – was missing the Before the Dawn concert residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2014, her first live performances since 1979, and very possibly her last.

All of this is to say, I’d probably be a prime candidate to turn my nose up at the fact Gen Z has discovered the music of one of my heroes through a teen drama – but on the contrary, I’m delighted. We all have to make those discoveries sometime and somewhere, even if that is through a show on Netflix, and gatekeeping our favorite artists serves nothing but our own egos. Plus, where better to start than with one of her greatest songs (and videos) of all, “Running Up That Hill”?

Part of the wonder of discovering Bush is the sense that her various oddities validate your own experiences as an outsider. Given the feelings of recognition I’ve found in Bush’s music over the years – from her tribute to the love of the gay couple living in secret in her apartment building that is 1978’s “Kashka From Baghdad”; to the sheer euphoric rush I feel listening to 1989’s “The Sensual World,” an ode to sybaritic pleasure inspired by Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses; to the dulcet vocals of “This Woman’s Work,” which never fail to bring a tear to my eye – why would I want to deny that to others?

As a teenager who always felt a little different (although, then again, what teenager doesn’t), I found a sense of refuge in Bush’s music; a reminder not just that it was okay not to conform, but that non-conformity is something that could be celebrated, or elevated to the highest levels of art. Even if I loathe the phrase entirely, Bush really did make me feel seen.

So, I’m happy for the Gen Z-ers discovering Bush for the first time. I’m excited for them to dive into all of the richly realized worlds she’s crafted over the years, across 10 records, dozens of music videos, a film, and songs that tell stories of accidentally dancing with Hitler, having sex with a snowman, or pay homage to her washing machine. And may it inspire them too: Lord knows we could use a little more of Bush’s strain of weird and wonderful creative magic in the world right now.