Those record sales are still being run! The Strangest Thing That Happened to Kate Bush Music | entertainment

The song in question, Running Up That Hill, originally released 37 years ago, ranked fourth on the US charts, its highest-ever hit in America. Last week alone it was broadcast 57 million times. As the same lady said this week: “It’s extraordinary? I mean, the whole world has gone crazy!”

The catalyst for Kate’s sudden appearance was the TV series Stranger Things, the popular sci-fi drama on Netflix, set in the 80s, about a group of teenagers who deal with a series of supernatural events in a fictional American city.

Running Up That Hill was used throughout the series as a mascot for Max, played by Sadie Sink. At one point, her friends turn her on to bring her back from a life-threatening encounter in the show’s parallel and frightening underworld.

“I am overwhelmed by the amount of affection and support the song receives,” Bush said in a rare statement. “It’s all happening very quickly, as if it was being driven by some kind of elemental force.”

Popular with the predominantly young audience, the show brings the 63-year-old’s music to a new generation of fans. They are in for a treat. Running Up That Hill was originally the lead single from her fifth album, Hounds Of Love, released in September 1985.

The album remains her most well-known hit, and is the perfect synthesis of business and experimental, from irresistible beats of singles like Cloudbusting, Running Up That Hill and the title song, to The Ninth Wave, a 22-minute track about a woman lost at sea.

A modern pop album where myth, mystery and pagan symbolism vie with a sophisticated rhythm, like Bush’s heyday and general allure, Hounds Of Love.

‘It really just so happens that it’s being walked along by the force element’

By that time, Catherine Bush had already gone through many inventions. Born in 1958, she was raised on a farm in Wheeling, Kent, with her physician father, Irish mother, and two older brothers, Paddy and John.

It was a happy and mysterious bohemian home environment, with unrestricted access to poetry, literature, and all kinds of music.

Bosch played the violin and piano, and began composing at a young age. Remarkably, she wrote her classic story, The Man with the Child in His Eyes, in her early teens.

A family friend knew Pink Floyd’s David Gilmore, who listened to Bush’s songs and caught his record company’s attention, all quickly, as if he was driving some kind of EMI.

She signed to the label in July 1976 and began her career at the 19-year-old two years later with Wuthering Heights – until last week, she was the number one spot in Britain.

Inspired by a television adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic 1847 novel, it remains one of the music’s boldest opening phrases, an unforgettable exploration of obsessive love, uncanny imagination and unrestrained femininity.

The song and its video made Bush an instant star. But with her striking looks, octave-jumping vocals, and flowing dance moves, at first, many considered her strange. Pamela Stevenson later mocked her on Not The Nine O’clock News and rock critics mocked her.

And bravely, she followed up her second album Lionheart in 1979 with a very ambitious live show. The Life Tour featured 13 people on stage, 17 costume changes and 24 songs played across three stage performances.

There was poetry, magic tricks, voice acting and dancing. With projections on the rear screen and pioneering use of a vertical microphone, the Tour of Life was an important step forward in the evolution of live performance. Few other artists have taken the humble pop party to such an experimental territory.

It was not an easy journey. Lighting engineer Bill Duffield died tragically during opening night in Poole after falling behind the scenes, and taking responsibility for the entire process, on and off stage, proved exhausting for Bush. She won’t do a full live show again for 35 years.

Instead, she focused her energies on creating innovative studio businesses: writing, operating, and producing a string of notable albums, from Never For Ever in 1980 to The Red Shoes in 1993.

Her music has become technically more daring and experimental. The title track appeared in The Dreaming in 1982 and is a didgeridoo alongside animal impersonator Percy Edwards pretending to be a sheep. The album ended with Bush’s simulation of a donkey braying. For the record company, the dream seemed like a nightmare.

But the victorious hounds, three years later, silenced any skeptics. Bosch saw her success as an opportunity to do whatever she wanted. “EMI left me alone from that point on,” she later said. Silence them.

After the promotional cycle for The Red Shoes, in 1994 it almost disappeared for more than a decade.

Her hiatus came during a turbulent period in her private life, which included the death of her mother and the end of a long-term relationship with guitarist and engineer Dale Palmer. She reportedly wished to regain a sense of self.

Having adopted numerous song and video roles, Bush became frustrated at not distinguishing between her image and the reality of her life.

She once said, “There is a likable character.” “But I was wondering very strongly about who I was.” Her producer John Kelly once told me: “People confuse the weirdness of her songs with the way she lives her life, but she’s a very humble character.

“I remember she came one day and decided there were two Kate Bushes. She was able to separate herself. It’s good not to confuse the artist she introduces to the public with the artist she takes home.”

During her time away from the music industry, Bush lived quietly in Thiel, Berks, with her new partner, guitarist Danny Macintosh, and their son Bertie, born in 1998.

She returned in 2005 with a double album Aerial, one of her most ambitious and impressive records. In 2011, she released not one, but two albums: The Director’s Cut, Reworking Songs from two previous records, 50 Words for Snow.

The latter was a winter album featuring an engraving by Elton John and Stephen Fry, including the life of a snowflake; A lost dog and a Victorian ghost; Sex with a snowman is a Yeti ordeal and reincarnation.

She was more visible than usual during this time, as she attended award ceremonies and weddings, and gathered CBE from the Queen at Windsor Castle.

However, the announcement in March 2014 of Bush returning to the stage after a 35-year absence was a thunderbolt out of the blue. In the era of full disclosure, I somehow managed to keep the cards of mystery and trump surprise.

100,000 tickets for 22 Before The Dawn performances at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, west London, sold out within 15 minutes.

In the run-up to opening night, the initial sense of shock was replaced by frantic speculation about what treasures might lie ahead.

Former RSC Director Adrian Noble was on board, along with choreographer Anthony van Last, guitarist Peter Gabriel David Rhodes and West End artist Sandra Marvin. The show was a victory.

Closer to a piece of musical theater than a rock concert, with movies, puppets, comedic graphics and stunning visuals, Before The Dawn focused primarily on material from Hounds Of Love and Aerial and featured none of its first four albums.

Her voice, now deeper and more emotional, remained sublime.

After her return to the stage, many hoped that Bosch would become a more active artistic presence again.

This did not happen for the next eight years, though she reworked her back catalog, released a live recording of Before The Dawn, and published a book of lyrics aptly titled How To Be Invisible.

Running on That Hill brought it back to the top of the charts without having to do anything at all. Her charming but inconspicuous interview earlier this week on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour was her first in six years.

It’s a kind of magic trick: the less the world sees of Bush, the more pronounced its effect. She has evolved from a theatrical teenage prodigy through a pagan pop goddess to a more melancholy chronicler of the power of the elements.

It has influenced generations of artists, from Sex Pistols’ John Lydon, progressive rock singer Peter Gabriel and a host of hip-hop stars, including Tupac and Big Boi. Its intensely private nature is not fiction, but the idea of ​​Bosch living as a hermit being is a simplistic one.

She splits her time between a Devon clifftop home and a home in the idyllic Oxfordshire village. She enjoys gardening and keeps in touch with many of her friends, including writers David Mitchell and Philip Pullman.

She has a studio at home and is almost certain to be working on new materials; If and when it will appear, it is something only a select few will know, and those who do not know it will not be told. One thing we learned from her is to expect the unexpected.

Don’t give up hope for a new Kate Bush album in the future. Strange things happened.

• Graeme Thompson is the author of Under The Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, published by Omnibus Press.