British Icon of the Week: Kate Bush, the Singer-Songwriter Who Creates a World of Her Own
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Singer-songwriter Kate Bush is having a real moment thanks to the very moving way her song "Running Up That Hill" is featured in the new season of Stranger Things. We're marking her unexpected (and very welcome) revival by making her our British Icon of the Week.
Let's take a look back at seven of her most memorable musical moments:
1. "Wuthering Heights"
Bush made history with "Wuthering Heights," her 1978 debut single, by becoming the first female artist to top the U.K. singles chart with a self-penned song. It was inspired by Emily Brontë's romantic novel of the same name. Bush sings from the point of the book's heroine, Cathy, a ghost haunting her former lover Heathcliff. There's definitely an otherworldly quality to Bush's swooping vocals and the video, which shows her dancing on the "wily, windy moors" she mentions in her lyrics.
2. "The Man With the Child In His Eyes"
Famously, Bush wrote this song when she was just 13 years old. Released in 1978, when she was 20, it became her first song to crack the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. She even performed it on SNL during a rare U.S. TV appearance. It's a song about a young woman's relationship with an older man who, to her at least, retains a certain boyish quality; there's a lovely sense of wide-eyed wonder in her lyrics and vocal performance.
3. "Babooshka"
A big hit in the U.K. and Australia in 1980, "Babooshka" was loosely inspired by an old English folk song called "Sovay." Here, Bush adopts the character of a woman who is taken for granted by her husband. To test his fidelity, she disguises herself as a younger woman and hatches a plan to seduce him. Bush gives us a clue as to how the story will pan out in the first verse, when she sings: "She couldn't have made a worse move..."
4. "Running Up That Hill"
When it first came out in 1986, "Running Up That Hill" peaked at number three in the U.K. and number 30 in the U.S., making it Bush's only stateside Top 40 hit. Thanks to Stranger Things, this incredible song is enchanting a whole new audience: at the time of writing, it's climbed to number four in the U.S. and heading for the top spot in Bush's homeland. It's a beautifully evocative piece of songwriting on which Bush wonders whether she could make "a deal with God" so that men and women could swap places to understand each other better.
5. "Cloudbusting"
Released soon after "Running Up That Hill," "Cloudbusting" is one of Bush's most affecting songs. It was inspired by Peter Reich's memoir A Book of Dreams, in which he recalls his father Wilhelm's attempts to invent a machine that could make it rain. Donald Sutherland stars opposite Bush in the poignant video, which shows Wilhelm being taken away by suspicious government officials. Even so, the video has a semi-happy ending.
6. "This Woman's Work"
Bush wrote "This Woman's Work" for a specific scene in She's Having a Baby, a 1989 movie starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern. It's a song about a man hoping desperately that his wife will be okay after she experiences complications during labor. "I know you have a little life in you yet, I know you have a lot of strength left," Bush sings pleadingly. She also directed the video, which co-stars A Discovery of Witches and Call My Agent! actor Tim McInnerny.
7. "King of the Mountain"
When it came out in 2005, Aerial was Bush's first album in 12 years. During that period, she kept a very low profile, leading to some British newspapers unfairly branding her a "recluse." It's kind of appropriate, then, that this comeback single is a meditation on fame of which Bush wonders whether Elvis Presley might have faked his own death so he could have a quieter life. "Elvis are you out there somewhere, looking like a happy man?" she sings in the chorus.
Do you have a favorite Kate Bush song?