Catherine Bush is an English singer, songwriter, musician, dancer and record producer. She is noted for her eclectic style, unconventional lyrics and innovative dance performances.
Her sound and choreography have influenced a range of artists.
labels: EMI, Columbia Records, Harvest, EMI
genres: art pop, progressive pop, singer-songwriter music, baroque pop, experimental pop, art rock, pop rock
awards: Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ivor Novello Awards
plays: guitar, piano, cello, bass guitar, voice
member of: PRS for Music
Facts from Wikidata and Discogs, free to use.
Bush was born on 30 July 1958 at a maternity hospital in Bexleyheath, Kent, to an English doctor, general practitioner Robert Bush (1920–2008), and Hannah Patricia (née Daly) (1918–1992), an Irish staff nurse, daughter of a farmer in County Waterford. She grew up with her elder brothers, John and Paddy, in an over 350-year-old former farmhouse at East Wickham near Welling, which adjoins Bexleyheath. Bush came from an artistic background: her mother was an amateur traditional Irish dancer, her father was an amateur pianist, Paddy worked as a musical instrument maker, and John was a poet and photographer. Both brothers were involved in the local folk music scene. She was brought up a Roman Catholic.
Bush attended St Joseph's Convent Grammar School, a Catholic girls' school in nearby Abbey Wood. During this time her family produced a demonstration tape with over 50 of her compositions, which was turned down by record labels. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour received the demo from Ricky Hopper, a mutual friend of Gilmour and the Bush family. The 1973 song "Passing Through Air" was recorded as a demo at Gilmour's studio a few weeks after her 15th birthday, and later was the earliest Kate Bush recording to be released officially.
Bush's musical aesthetic is eclectic; she employs varied influences and melds disparate styles, often within a single song or over the course of an album. Simon Reynolds of The Guardian called Bush "the queen of art-pop", and she has also been described as art rock, baroque pop, avant-pop, progressive pop, and post-progressive. Ben Myers of Prog called Bush "prog's first pop star and pop's first prog star" whose "career history and collaborations are inextricably tied in with prog and her ever-evolving output has much more in common with the genre than the pop world in which she first found herself operating." She has been grouped with other "'arty' 1970s and '80s British pop rock artists" such as Roxy Music and Peter Gabriel. Even in her...
Elements of Bush's lyrics employ historical or literary references. This is embodied in her first single "Wuthering Heights", which is based on Emily Brontë's novel of the same title. She has described herself as a storyteller who embodies the character singing the song and has dismissed efforts by others to conceive of her work as autobiographical. Bush's lyrics have been known to touch on obscure or esoteric subject matter, and New Musical Express noted that Bush was not afraid to tackle sensitive and taboo subjects in her work. "The Kick Inside" is based on a traditional English folk song (The Ballad of Lucy Wan) about an incestuous pregnancy and a resulting suicide. "Kashka from Baghdad" is a song about a gay couple. She references G....
Are you them, or do you know them? The mail slot is open.
"Running Up That Hill" (also titled "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)") is a song by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush, released as the lead single from her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love, on 5 August 1985 by EMI Records. Bush wrote and produced it using a Fairlight CMI synthesiser and a LinnDrum drum machine.
The lyrics imagine a man and a woman who make "a deal with God" to exchange places.
In 1983, Bush moved from London to rural Sevenoaks, where she set up a songwriting room with a piano, a Fairlight CMI synthesiser and an eight-track recorder. "Running Up That Hill" was the first song Bush composed for her fifth album, Hounds of Love (1985). She wrote it in a single evening, and recorded a demo onto eight-track. According to Bush, the song began with the Fairlight riff. She sang a drum pattern to her boyfriend and recording engineer, Del Palmer, who programmed it into a LinnDrum drum machine. She said the lyrics for the first verse "came straight away".
"Running Up That Hill" features synthesisers, guitar, bass, a driving drum beat and balalaika, a Russian string instrument. It uses the key of C minor, with a vocal melody focusing on the minor seventh, creating tension and a sense of pending resolution. On the word "could", Bush sings a major seventh over an A-flat major chord, using dissonance to create more tension.
Bush debuted "Running Up That Hill" in a performance on the BBC One chat show Wogan to an estimated audience of nine million. She performed from behind a lectern, backed by a band including Palmer and Paddy Bush. The performers wore coats similar to religious habits and were accompanied by standard-bearers waving "billowing" flags. Mojo wrote later: "Particularly in the context of a cosy mainstream show, there was something distinctly ritualistic about the whole affair, certainly in keeping with the song's magickal theme." Bush also performed it on the West German show Peter's Pop Show. "Running Up That Hill" was released as the lead single from Hounds of Love on 5 August 1985, and reached number three on the UK singles chart.
The music video was directed by David Garfath and choreographed by Diane Grey. It features Bush performing an interpretive dance with the dancer Misha Hervieu. Bush felt that dance in music videos was "being used quite trivially, it was being exploited: haphazard images, busy, lots of dances, without really the serious expression, and wonderful expression, that dance can give". Instead, she wanted to create a "serious piece of dance" comprising a simple routine between two people. In the video, Bush mimics an archer pulling a bow, an idea she reused for the single cover.