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caption,Pictured is Kate Bush performing live in 1978. More than four decades later, thanks to Netflix, the singer is enjoying the honey of success again.
His work combines a peculiarly English mysticism with an equally British sense of absurd humor.
“Why are people so interested in me if I only make an album every now and then?” asked the enigmatic singer Kate Bush, now 63, who went 12 years without releasing a new album in 1989.
But now the well-known series stranger thingsbrought her back into the limelight after her 1985 song Running Up That Hill was featured in several episodes of the fourth season, which Netflix recently premiered.
It was such a success that it reached #1 on the charts in the UK, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Austria that Friday.
And that’s not all: on the Spotify platform It became the most listened song in the world.
In her native UK, Bush is the oldest artist to have had a hit to the top of the podium after deposing the former One Direction member. Harry Styles.
Thanks to the sci-fi series, Running Up That Hill has also entered the top 10 in the USA in recent days.
Image copyrightPA Media
caption,
Kate Bush’s song replaced Harry Styles’ hit “As It Was” at the top of the UK charts.
The euphoria also reached TikTok, where videos with the hashtag #RunningUpThatHilI’ve been played more than 530 million times.
“I have never experienced something like that!”, the star wrote on his official website on Thursday. “Everything is so amazing.”
“It’s a great thing because people are hearing Kate Bush for the first time and now they’re going to start their own little journey and learn more about this amazing artist,” he said. Matt EverittBBC Radio 6 music presenter.
“When (the song) came out so many years ago, it sounded brand new,” he added, “and so many years later, still sounds the same some That nobody He has Done before”.
The bush puzzle
Reserved and with few public appearances – in 2014 she gave a series of concerts in London after 35 years without performing on stage – Bush remains in the collective memory of Anglo-Saxon music.
In press interviews, she is often charming but skillfully evasive and can’t or won’t put into words why and how she makes her music.
His influence has been constant for artists like Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Lady Gaga, Bat for Lashes, Goldfrapp, Florence Welch, Joanna Newsom, Tricky and Outkast.
Image copyrightNetflix
caption,
The Netflix series Stranger Things put Kate Bush back on top.
But at the age of 20 he made an unusually risky decision: withdraw from the tour.
This allowed him to focus on making music and experimenting with the latest technology.
According to engineer Nick Launey, “Walking into the studio with her every day was like stepping into fantasy land,” the BBC reported.
Bush developed a similar penchant for creative control when it came to making music videos.
story of a song
In Stranger Things, the song Running Up That Hill keeps popping up because it’s obsessively performed by one of the teenage leads, Max Mayfield.
Running Up That Hill originally appeared on Bush’s fifth album Hounds Of Love, which she produced and composed mostly on a Fairlight CMI. an innovative digital synthesizer.
Bush wrote the song at his home in Kent in the summer of 1983.
The lyrics are an expression of radical empathy: a fantasy about doing business with God, to switch places with your lover so that you can understand each other fully.
It was Bush’s then-friend and collaborator, Del Palmer, who programmed the electronic drum kit that heralds both the song and the Hounds of Love album.
Image copyrightAFP
caption,
Kate Bush says renewed interest in her music is “very exciting”.
EMI rejected the original title, A Deal with God, in order not to offend a section of the population.
It was finally a big hit in 1985 and Hounds of Love became the fourth best selling album in the UK that year.
Running Up That Hill was remixed for the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony, so it’s not exactly buried treasure, but it somehow retains the aura of a cult artist.
“I was really surprised that some of my stuff that’s not particularly mainstream has been so successful,” the singer said in 2011.
This new and unexpected success for Bush is coming 44 years after he last reached a Number one with his debut single Wuthering Heights.
That four-decade gap is the longest in chart history, surpassing Tom Jones, who had to wait 42 years for Green Grass of Home to reach the top in 1966, and his next #1 charity single, (Barry) Islands in the Stream .
Image copyrightGetty Images
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