The entire internet is talking about Kate Bush today.
I love it! (If you’re wondering why, it has to do with yesterday’s post. If you’re ready for spoilers, Variety has a great write-up and interview about it.)
I came to Kate Bush relatively late in my life of music consumption. As a teen, my main lady piano rocker who communes with the ethereal world was Tori Amos.
I’d encounter older music fans who felt Tori was derivative of Kate Bush, so of course as a major Ears With Feet (that’s what Tori fans were called, in her heyday) I completed eschewed Ms. Bush for nearly a decade, until I picked up her LP Aerials at Tower Records in 2005.
That record was certainly Amos-esque, so I felt I finally understood the comparison. Imagine my surprise when in 2018 I finally dug into the rest of Kate Bush’s catalog to discover how much more she is than “lady piano rocker” (just as Tori is, as well).
I’m sure I had heard “Running Up That Hill” many times prior to that (including from Tori’s own cover of it, medleyed with her own “God”). It hit me in a completely different way when I finally I listened to it in the context of opening of Hounds of Love
The insistent galloping of the drums. The strange synthesizer sighs swirling around my head, darting from headphone to headphone.
And, that iconic chorus:
And if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our placesBe running up that road
Be running up that hill
Be running up that buildingSay, if I only could, oh
When I first heard “Running Up That Hill”, it made me think of Sisyphus. His is the eternal struggle of pushing the same boulder up the same hill every day, only for it to roll back down again. He is the undying patron of lost causes and impossible struggles.
Would you willingly exchange places with him, even for a day? Could you survive? [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Running Up That Hill” – Kate Bush