RUNNING UP THE CHARTS
STRANGE PHENOMENA
NEARLY 40 YEARS ON, RUNNING UP THAT HILL IS THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING. WE TRACK KATE BUSH’S METEORIC AND RECORD-BREAKING RENAISSANCE AS A RESULT OF THE NETFLIX SMASH, STRANGER THINGS.
FELIX ROWE
Kate Bush has broken three UK chart records with her 2022 No.1 placing for Running Up That Hill
If you’re planning to bow out in style, Kate Bush showed how it’s done with characteristic aplomb. Her 2014 return to the stage for a 22-day swansong at the Hammersmith Apollo appeared to tie a neat bow around a glittering career. The event implied a certain finality – awell-deserved victory lap, immortalised two years later on 2016’s Before The Dawn live album.
Her activities in the five-plus years since seem to confirm that sense of wrapping up. Kate has been methodically tying up loose ends – remastering her back catalogue and publishing a collection of lyrics, the aptly-titled How To Be Invisible (2018). This latter day curation has included the removal of Rolf Harris’s contributions to 2005’s Aerial. For the remaster, Kate replaced the disgraced star’s contributions on An Architect’s Dream and The Painter’s Link with her son, Albert ‘Bertie’ McIntosh, reprising his Hammersmith performance.
2019 saw the release of The Other Sides – acareer-spanning collection of B-sides, covers and 12” mixes that diehards will no doubt be familiar with already. Though hardly Kate’s definitive work, it’s a welcome addition to have these rarities assembled in one package (indeed, Classic Pop awarded it a deserving 9/10!). Kate feels right at home on traditional folk songs such as Mna Na Heireann. Sexual Healing, though, is more jarring on first listen, seeking to reconcile the frisky American soul classic with that very English pastoral soprano. Elsewhere, we’re treated to two Elton classics, Rocket Man and Candle In The Wind that, along with the deeper cuts, fair better at displaying her own unique artistry.