Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush

June 12, 2022 1:04 PM

Running Up That Hill is a track from the 1985 Kate Bush album "Hounds of Love". The song was approved and heard in the recent "I'm still here" scene in Stranger Things (lyrical relevance), resulting in new fans, social media uses, and some chart reappearances. More in The Irish Times, and some words from Kate. (From the same album: Hounds of Love, Cloudbusting, The Big Sky)
posted by Wordshore (65 comments total)

Kate Bush, 'Running Up That Hill,' and the End of Music Charts as We Knew Them
posted by box at 1:20 PM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

From twitter a few days ago, paraphrasing...

"I can't wait until these new Kate Bush fans check out her recent album and find the track that is 14 minutes about her fucking a snowman."
posted by hippybear at 1:22 PM on June 12, 2022 [24 favorites]

This post inspired by the 13 year old youngest child of a cousin excitedly asking me if I had heard of a singer named Kate Bush, and all the middle-aged people in the room simultaneously turning slightly greyer.
posted by Wordshore at 1:35 PM on June 12, 2022 [33 favorites]

Obligatory Meg Myers’ take
posted by armoir from antproof case at 1:52 PM on June 12, 2022 [9 favorites]

Instantly recognizable synth lead. Instant.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:53 PM on June 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

My main humble opinion about Kate Bush: Disk 2 of Aerial "A Sky Of Honey" [42m] is her best long-form work, and it is thrilling every time I listen to it. I think it best melds her vision of sounds coming from everyday life into a musical piece, and wow, it's powerful.

"the day is full of birds"
posted by hippybear at 1:55 PM on June 12, 2022 [15 favorites]

This post inspired by the 13 year old youngest child of a cousin excitedly asking me if I had heard of a singer named Kate Bush, and all the middle-aged people in the room simultaneously turning slightly greyer.

My wife is an English professor at a school for aspiring rock and jazz musicians, and a few years ago she had this experience

Student in Back Row: So, there's this singer. Her name is Kate Bush. . .
Her: [bursts out laughing]
Student in Back Row: What?
Her: No, sorry, it's just. . .do I look like someone who has never heard of Kate Bush?
Student in Front: No, you look exactly like someone who listens to Kate Bush.

Her students discovering stuff that she discovered at their age, and them being just as excited as she was at that moment is one of the many joys of her job.
posted by bl1nk at 2:06 PM on June 12, 2022 [50 favorites]

It's been amusing watching certain types of adults conveniently forgetting that the first time they heard "Running Up That Hill" it was Placebo on The OC.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:24 PM on June 12, 2022 [18 favorites]

I remember when this song first came out and I basically haven't stopped listening to it ever since.
posted by loquacious at 2:33 PM on June 12, 2022 [11 favorites]

betweenthebars: "Placebo on The OC."

OK, but great cover version and great show.
posted by signal at 2:55 PM on June 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

It's been amusing watching certain types of adults conveniently forgetting that the first time they heard "Running Up That Hill" it was Placebo on The OC.

On the other hand, wrestling fans are absolutely pissing ourselves laughing as people discover the music for one of the all-time greatest WrestleMania video packages.
posted by Etrigan at 3:02 PM on June 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

I don’t watch Stranger Things, so while I was aware that the song was used in a dramatic and important scene, I hadn’t seen this scene until the YouTube link in the post above. It’s crazy that they start the song a quarter of the way through, considering it’s got such an iconic opening riff, but whatever. Did they really go and edit the song to *repeat* the line “C'mon, baby, c'mon darling / Let me steal this moment from you now” for the show? It’s so weird when editors do this. Maybe it’s to like, underline the specific line in the song, but it comes off a little hack-ey.
posted by RubixsQube at 3:04 PM on June 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Remembering watching Kate and backing band perform (mime) to this on Wogan's show (a low-quality and horribly popular TV chat show) in 1985; it was practically obligatory for various artists to do their thing on his show. Wogan was his usual amiable-but-clueless host self. It was a doubly strange moment as I'd very briefly met Kate two (maybe three?) years before, and I remember being really confused as she simultaneously looked the same, but also very different.

The album quickly became one of my favourites for the next decade or so. Cloudbusting, in particular, holds some memories of an ex- from some summers ago. And one of my biggest regrets in life was not seeing Kate live a few years back.

I really should climb Dragon Hill one day, finally, but only with the right person.
posted by Wordshore at 3:13 PM on June 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

I'd love to know what the 13yr olds will think of the second half of the album. The whole story of the woman dying in the ice.

... or perhaps move back one album to the deeply realized strangeness of The Dreaming
posted by philip-random at 3:17 PM on June 12, 2022 [8 favorites]

I'd love to know what the 13yr olds will think of the second half of the album.

I had the exact same thought when I heard this song was charting again: Wait 'til they hear Side B of the album. That is, assuming, 13 year olds still listen to entire albums.
posted by TrialByMedia at 3:22 PM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'd love to know what the 13yr olds will think of the second half of the album.

I'm hoping there will be reaction videos of the same watching some of her other music videos. Sat In Your Lap would be a good one to start (first released 41 years ago this month).
posted by Wordshore at 3:34 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

I kind of want to... I don't know how true this is, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but Kate Bush has a status in the UK that very few music acts have achieved. The Beatles and Bowie come to mind. The terrible cliché National Treasure isn't inappropriate and it's been so pretty much since she was nineteen years old.

Wuthering Heights was one of those records that had a huge impact because it sounded like nothing one had ever heard before (another one from the same period was Are Friends Electric? by Tubeway Army). It probably still does, however many times one hears it.

The Wogan performance of Running Up That Hill was extraordinary because it was an almost bullet-proof coup-de-theatre: All the BBC had to do was point a camera at it and it had the same drama as a video. I remember seeing it, and I don't know that I even watched Wogan.

Anyway, my favourite KB album is The Dreaming, if only because it was the one that wasn't so much of a hit, so it felt like something I'd discovered for myself.

I'm not really someone who spends much time with Young People, but the impression I get from friends and so forth is the they're hugely catholic in their tastes and a lot more capable of appreciating the finer qualities in a diverse range of musics without the prejudices and hidebound critical assumptions that we older people tend to impose on things.
posted by Grangousier at 3:52 PM on June 12, 2022 [15 favorites]

What’s old is new again, ad infinitum eh?

I listened to the album when it came out and I still listen to it today. There’s so much to talk about and so many different ways to say how amazing it is. Truly, what a remarkable accomplishment!

But…….

I don’t often see much mention of Watching You Without Me. Yes, it’s in the middle of side B and isn’t obvious in its subject matter but it is haunting. And terrifying in ways that other songs in that segment are not. And sad. So sad. So, while I still listen to Cloudbursting and the other hits on the album, this is the one that remains my favourite and that I listen to most often.

My daughter likes Kate Bush as well. She’s quite enamoured with Babooshka. Always ahead of the curve, my daughter is, having cozied on to Kate Bush some time last year. Anyway, I was more than happy to introduce her to the brilliance of Hounds of Love.
posted by ashbury at 4:28 PM on June 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

Oh, and every time I went into a record shop in the last three months of 1985 (and I spent as much time as possible in record shops), someone was buying a copy of The Hounds of Love.
posted by Grangousier at 4:29 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fiona Apple referenced Running Up That Hill in her song Fetch the Bolt Cutters and, coincidentally, mentioned Kate Bush today in her Sunday message.
posted by Bee'sWing at 4:34 PM on June 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

I got intro'd to Kate Bush by super-enthusiastic World of Darkness MUSH nerds in the mid-90s. Since this was all text and none of my IRC/DCC contacts had any of her stuff, I wound up going down to Everyday Music and getting a copy of The Whole Story; I can't remember if that was all they had in, if it was cheapest, or I was just looking for a best-of. It was years before I went out and looked for more because a) not a lot of money available for CD purchases and b) it was such a freaking amazing collection, it was like.. this is enough! This is so much!

I don't have a lot of fandoms that I connect with, but I'm always happy to meet a Kate Bush fan out in the wild and just bask in how great her music is.
posted by curious nu at 4:50 PM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

A Sky Of Honey, disk two of Aerial, is the Kate for me. I love her other stuff, but this 40 minutes or so is simply transcendent.
posted by hippybear at 4:57 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

I had the This Woman’s Work box set, with every album up to The Sensual World, and two disks of Other Stuff, which should tell you how much I into her music (the box wasn’t released in the US and cost me a bundle and then I lost in becoming homeless). I can just listen to her all the way through the entire discography, closing my eyes and laying back and listening to the soundscapes.

And then I heard about another cover of hers (this Placebo one) and wonder if anyone remembers the Pat Benatar cover of Wuthering Heights…
posted by mephron at 5:18 PM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

You cannot tease us with that without linking it.
posted by hippybear at 5:26 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

My spouse reminded me of the Pat Benatar cover yesterday.
posted by mollweide at 5:38 PM on June 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

This post inspired by the 13 year old youngest child of a cousin excitedly asking me if I had heard of a singer named Kate Bush, and all the middle-aged people in the room simultaneously turning slightly greyer.

I had the same reaction to this recent comment in r/TheGodfather:

When Michael arrives at the hospital in the Godfather 1 and notices no one is there, we can hear something like a man's voice stuck in a loop. It appears as if it's audio recording that's been looped?

I wonder, what the hell is that supposed to be? Did somebody leave an audio device and turned it off incorrectly so it got stuck?

It's a record player in the runout groove.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:08 PM on June 12, 2022 [12 favorites]

I'm just here representing any thirdworld elder millennials who legitimately thought this song IS by placebo until this year. Kate Bush really never seemed to make a dent in my cultural landscape.
posted by cendawanita at 6:20 PM on June 12, 2022

Kate Bush really never seemed to make a dent in my cultural landscape.

I recommend you get the "best of" album The Whole Story, and once you've digested that, go into the albums. She's one of the singular artists existing ever.
posted by hippybear at 6:51 PM on June 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

Grew up with Kate Bush via the catholic tastes of my father. Wore out a cassette of The Dreaming across two 90s Saturns without aux input. By the end of its life a few years ago the tape was a distorted mess — and had the soundscape of windows down at highway speeds in summer to accompany it.

Seems most every younger person who heard her in my presence was fast a fan. Absolutely delightful that she's now familiar to an enormous number of appreciative new listeners.
posted by otsebyatina at 7:42 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

I will always be grateful to my (adored, and much missed) sophomore and junior year English teacher who played "Wuthering Heights" for us in class in '93 after we'd read the book. Never much liked the book, but the song--wow. A whole class full of amazed teenagers.
posted by lysimache at 8:27 PM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

I recommend you get the "best of" album The Whole Story, and once you've digested that, go into the albums. She's one of the singular artists existing ever.

I have been dipping my toes in the various best of playlists since the season reintroduced the song but i have to admit, at this point my appreciation is more intellectual ('oh this is a thing in western cultural canon') but I'm still laughing at myself at my genuine surprise as well as the other people in my life. Just a genuine blip, and i at least remembered watching the wuthering heights music video. Just taking the opportunity to register my utter surprise and i actually lived through those decades (and western hegemony was more singularly driven by mainstream media)! But maybe when my brain is in a more exploratory mood, I might come back to her.
posted by cendawanita at 8:49 PM on June 12, 2022

I've always liked this song but I probably hadn't heard it for 15-20 years, and when it showed up on Stranger Things I heard that synth riff and for a moment I honestly thought it was Catch Me (I'm Falling) by the super-cheesetastic '80s pop band Pretty Poison. The songs are worlds apart, but if you just listen to Catch Me's synth bleeps they do have a weird similarity!

It’s crazy that they start the song a quarter of the way through, considering it’s got such an iconic opening riff, but whatever.

A few years ago there was some commercial that used a chopped-up version of Jaan Pehechaan Ho, a song I've heard a thousand times on a local college radio show. The edits drove me nuts. It was like somebody singing a version of I've Been Working on the Railroad that went, "I've been... all the live-long... pass the time... Dina blow your... railroad..." Just... no! So, I feel your pain, hearing this song you love all stitched together in ways that just sound wrong, but in other ways the show is extremely respectful to the song and to Kate Bush. Without getting into spoilers, I'll just say that Bush's music is held up as this incredible, transformative force for good. It's an absolute tribute to her.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 9:42 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was 12 in 1986, and eventually grew to adore Kate Bush.

I'm currently watching Stranger Things season 4 now, and I was actually quite moved by that scene and the song. I do have a soft spot for the Max character. I hope she'll be all right at the end of the season.
posted by Harald74 at 10:48 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

The song is actually introduced in the first episode, opening riff and all - someone's listening to it on cassette during a scene where everyone is feeling alienated and alone. When we get to The Big Scene in a later episode and the song reappears, it starts partway through because that's where the tape was stopped last time.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:49 PM on June 12, 2022 [14 favorites]

Did they really go and edit the song to *repeat* the line “C'mon, baby, c'mon darling / Let me steal this moment from you now” for the show?

AFAICT on a watch through the last 4+ minutes of S4E4, they do not repeat the that line while the song is playing in an effort to save Max, and the song proceeds *largely* with the original timing/structure (though I'm hearing some strings and other production additions, and a little bit of minor fudging, possibly including the removal of "c'mon baby").
posted by weston at 11:38 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Well, it is after all her most accessible song on her most accessible album. The video, though, is pure Kate Bush, the music being merely an excuse to show the dancing. Love it!
posted by Beholder at 1:27 AM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Tom Ellard (of Severed Heads) is less sanguine: The charting of Kate Bush via Netflix and TikTok marks the death by strangulation of any new music. It’s blue cold and dead. If you think I’m just jealous you’re not seeing the endless licensing offers I get for my obscure old shit. Like throwing cash on a coffin
posted by acb at 1:42 AM on June 13, 2022

Only today, after a lifetime of listening to it, do I realize the lyrics are:

"Swap Our Places"

Not,

"Swamp All Places" ,

Which y'know, utterly changes the entire *vibe* and undertone of the entire song.
posted by Faintdreams at 2:50 AM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't see how it's really that different a phenomenon from Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Sam Cooke's Wonderful World getting to the top of the charts in 1985 following the use of sound-alikes in a jeans advert (other revived 45s followed, using the original licensed tracks ). It didn't kill music then (although there were plenty of complaints identical to Mr Ellard's), and it won't kill music now. The problem now is that the amount of music being produced is so vast and so dispersed that it's very difficult for any of it to get a large enough profile in the culture generally to make that much of an impact unless it's promoted by the largest record companies, and their tastes tend to run to the generic. The music's fine, but the culture's fucked.
posted by Grangousier at 3:05 AM on June 13, 2022 [12 favorites]

As I said on Twitter: I, for one, welcome new Kate Bush fans, but this now means they are obligated to begin dramatically dancing once the opening strains of "Wuthering Heights" starts. Listen, I don't make the rules, I just enforce them.
posted by Kitteh at 6:39 AM on June 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

This is - what? - Tom Tom Club's third or fourth or twenieth time around the universe with Genius Of Love? Who's keeping track?

Each time it's a little different and catchy and it's never old.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:42 AM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

I love the song, but I cannot hear it without thinking about that scene from Warehouse 13. :(
posted by xedrik at 7:20 AM on June 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Plus one for starting with The Whole Story, if only because Experiment Ⅳ is difficult to find anywhere else, and it is excellent.
posted by bouvin at 7:50 AM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

That scene from Warehouse 13 uses the cover by Track and Field.

I like the Pat Benatar cover. (I was also 15 when it appeared on Crimes of Passion so may be biased by hormones.)
posted by kirkaracha at 7:52 AM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Big Boi of Outkast fame says Kate Bush is tied with Bob Marley as his favorite artist of all time, and a verse from "Running Up That Hill" as his favorite verse ever.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:57 AM on June 13, 2022 [11 favorites]

actually home taping killed music back in the 80s, all "new music" since then has just been a series of hauntings
posted by Gerald Bostock at 8:04 AM on June 13, 2022 [12 favorites]

So completely-unpopular-in-the-80s-me is really tickled that this is popular now, because it feels like yet another validation that I was cool no matter what those idiots in my idiotic pedestrian hometown thought. Even though my journey to loving Kate Bush was a bit rocky: I'm pretty sure I originally liked Running up that Hill, but I hated the video so much (something about her running around in a nightgown and a lot of pretentious interpretive dancing) (I intentionally haven't rewatched it before making this comment so forgive me if it's awesome and I'm doing it a disservice) and I ended up not liking the song after changing the channel every time the video came on. Then I heard Pat Benatar's cover of Wuthering Heights, which I really liked, and it led me to the original. So then I bought The Whole Story and Hounds of Love and became a fan. I haven't heard the Placebo cover, but I'll go listen to it now.

I still haven't seen Stranger Things, though, because despite the fact that everything I've seen in every trailer from the very first episode looks like it's 100% keyed to my interests, I'm still pretty sure it's going to be too scary for me.
posted by Mchelly at 9:22 AM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Kate: find 'add to favorites' link
Bush: click 'add to favorites' link
posted by filtergik at 9:35 AM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

+1 for Warehouse 13 being the first exposure I can recall.

It's weird to see the 80s, which I lived through, continuing to be regarded as some golden age for popular music when I distinctly recall most of the music on the radio being crap back then. When GTA Vice City came out I had younger coworkers who played the game talking about how awesome 80s music must be and I told them no, that was it. That game contains the 10 or 12 hours of good 80s music.

I'm also almost positive Heart and Soul by T'Pau was algorithmically generated by Pandora or something because I have no recollection of that song at all and all of a sudden it pops up on every 80s Hits mix I find online. Am I being incepted here or is my memory starting to go? I don't really mind either way I guess.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 10:27 AM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Kate Bush, 'Running Up That Hill,' and the End of Music Charts as We Knew Them

Don't tell the author about the utter chaos that is the UK Top 100 chart.

Mr Brightside has been on the chart for 318 consecutive weeks (making its first appearance there 12 years after its release), and it has become something of a national pastime to manipulate the charts on Christmas. Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls is currently charting for some reason.

The UK Top 100 chart sure must be an indication of something, but nobody really seems to know what that is.
posted by schmod at 10:38 AM on June 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

And the Sex Pistols are back #57! Happy Jubilee, everyone!
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:57 AM on June 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

That game contains the 10 or 12 hours of good 80s music.

The Vice City soundtrack doesn't feature anything by Talking Heads, Prince, REM, The Smiths, Elvis Costello, Run DMC, The Clash, The Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, The Pretenders, Oingo Boingo, X, David Bowie, Tom Waits, The Pogues, Tears for Fears, Beastie Boys, U2, Nine Inch Nails, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, The Police, The Pixies, Violent Femmes, The Cure, Sonic Youth or Public Enemy. But yeah, other than that, what have the 80s ever done for us?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:47 PM on June 13, 2022 [13 favorites]

Ursula Hitler YES

And that is just the beginning.
posted by kittensofthenight at 11:01 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

So these charts, are they measuring number of times streamed?

I never thought of this before, but if you buy a single you can play it over and over- 45, cassingle, cd-single, mp3 of one song. If you want to listen to a song on repeat with Apple music or Spotify over and over because its the newest, best thing you've heard, does every play count as a single sale? Like views on Youtube?

That's a fundamentally different measurement , number of listens vs. number of purchases.

Apologies if this has been hashed out before.
posted by kittensofthenight at 11:06 PM on June 13, 2022

How Kate Bush Became the Queen of Alt-Pop.

I was today years old when I discovered that “RUTH’ is not about the desire for god-like superpowers to overcome the hassles of life, but about the desire for communication in a failing relationship.

I was very much in my personal “🤘metal-hole🤘” at the time, and went out of my way to not “get” stuff like Kate Bush.

Also - David Gilmour of Pink Floyd was a family friend who helped shop around her first demo.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:51 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

So these charts, are they measuring number of times streamed?

Yes.

does every play count as a single sale

No, there’s a formula. Appears that right now it’s something like 150 streams = 1 track sale, 1500 streams (or maybe 1250?) = 1 album sale.
posted by atoxyl at 2:17 AM on June 14, 2022

And that is just the beginning.

Oh, I KNOW. And I was just sticking to the 80s artists who enjoyed pretty universal critical acclaim AND weren't on the Vice City soundtrack as far as I could remember. If it was just my own personal damn-the-critics list of great 80s music I'd include Thomas Dolby, the Eurythmics, Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Madness and many more, and there a lot of acts who had some fantastic songs in the 80s but arguably peaked earlier (like Neil Young, The Ramones and Lou Reed) or later (like Nirvana.) And of course there's Madonna, bestriding the decade like a colossus in a pointy bra.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:44 AM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

Aussievision: When Eurovision artists cover Kate Bush

(Slightly clickbaity, as these aren't actual Eurovision songs)
posted by Wordshore at 5:51 AM on June 14, 2022

Tangent, but not to be missed -- the most joyful, goofiest interpretation of Wuthering Heights.

The annual, international Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever is July 30 this year, which happens to be Kate's birthday.
posted by vers at 10:35 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

> I'm also almost positive Heart and Soul by T'Pau was algorithmically generated by Pandora or something

Heh, I got their album on cassette. I was stunned when something clicked and I realized they had a song about Frankenstein!
posted by Pronoiac at 10:17 PM on June 14, 2022

I first became aware of Kate Bush after seeing England, My Leotard on Not the Nine O'Clock News.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:32 AM on June 16, 2022

BBC News, just now: Kate Bush is number one, thanks to Stranger Things

It is currently the most-streamed song in the world, with more than 57 million global plays last week. On TikTok, videos featuring the #RunningUpThatHill hashtag have been viewed more than 530 million times. And in addition to the UK, the song is number one in Norway, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Austria, while giving Bush her first ever top 10 hit in the US.
posted by Wordshore at 10:05 AM on June 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

Kate Bush is badass
posted by philip-random at 2:24 PM on June 17, 2022

more than 57 million global plays

Apparently she's making quite a bit of money out of that:

...Kate Bush wrote Running Up That Hill, produced Running Up That Hill and owns 100% of its songwriting, publishing and licensing rights. Basically, Kate Bush is currently making around £250,000 a week from one song she released in 1985.

...She's averaging 8 million streams a day on Spotify alone, which works out at over £150,000 a week. Throw in the other streamers, and radio play (she earned over £10,000 from Radio 2 airplay alone), and paid downloads. £250,000 is on the conservative side of estimating it.

posted by bitteschoen at 1:56 PM on June 18, 2022

The Kate Bush Story - Running up That Hill (2014 BBC Documentary) (59min)
posted by Thella at 4:27 PM on June 18, 2022 [2 favorites]