FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
Two: Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)
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THIS is the second anniversary feature…
around Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). It was released as a single on 5th August, 1985 (this article provides interesting facts about the song). The first single from Hounds of Love, the fortieth anniversary is going to be a big occasion. I know a lot will be written about it. Hounds of Love turns forty on 16th September. I am going to draw from Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 Hounds of Love book when it comes to a deeper dive into the track. One of the greatest singles Kate Bush ever released. Although its video is phenomenal and without controversy at all, unfortunately MTV banned it at one point. It was not the only video of hers that was banned. When she released Experiment IV in 1986, the video was deemed too scary, Even Wuthering Heights original video was not shown widely in America as it was seen as too intense and scary. It was not a hit. A second video was shot for Top of the Pops when the single became a success in the U.K. As this feature highlights, the American market once again found a very innocent and pretty normal video too scary or strange:
“The iconic Kate Bush was propelled back into the topic of discussion this week thanks to her legendary hit 'Running Up That Hill' featuring prominently in the new series of Stranger Things.
However, the track hasn't been without its controversy, with the video for it even being banned from MTV at one point.
The first volume of season four of Stranger Things premiered on 27 May, and sees the British pop legend's 1985 hit 'Running Up That Hill' feature heavily throughout the show, in turn helping the reclusive star get to number one on the iTunes chart.
It's first heard in the first episode, on Max Mayfield’s (Sadie Sink) Walkman, and continues to be a pivotal song for the character as the drama unfolds.
The success of the track has been such that not only has the song topped the iTunes chart, but it’s also overtaken 'Wuthering Heights' on Spotify to become Bush's most popular track on the service.
However, what people perhaps don't know about the track is that its abstract and controversial video was deemed suitable by MTV in the 1980s; the channel decided not to run it, instead opting for a lip-synced performance of it from the Terry Wogan show of all places instead.
While the video is certainly artfully done, it wasn't particularly outrageous. Featuring Bush performing an interpretive dance with dancer Michael Hervieu, the pair perform a repeated gesture suggestive of drawing a bow and arrow, with these scenes intercut with surreal sequences of Bush and Hervieu searching through crowds of masked strangers”.
I want to take from Leah Kardos’s Hounds of Love book as she dissects the music. The instruments and technology. A musicologist examination of an epic track. Kardos starts by starting how Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) starts with a Fairlight CMI drone. “The half-speed TRAMCHLO preset, drenched in thick, Quantexc reverb haze”. I think that the percussive beat is one of the most notable parts of the song. How it is the heartbeat and drive of the song. It is “a combination of LinnDrum rhythms and Stuart Elliott’s muscular toms and snares. Deeper than usual, the kick sample is tuned so low (around 65Hz) that it practically functions like a bass”. There is so much to discuss when it comes to the players and the dynamics. I would advise people pick up a copy of Leah Kardos’s book. Bush’s vocal delivery is another standout of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). “She will often hit the roof of the phrase (B♭) with an insistent, almost combative energy, like a bird testing a glass ceiling for a way out” (she gives an example of the lines “Do you want to know, know that it doesn’t hurt me”). The drone continues throughout the song. “At the end of the verse, Bush switches to a more caressing voice and the first softening melodic curve, ‘Do you want to hear about the deal that I’m making?’ Throughout the song, these moments of strident, declamatory intervallic leaping are briefly surrounded buy softer movements of lyrical warmth (‘You, it’s you and me’). The syncopated three-note background phrase (‘Yeah, yeah yo’) doesn’t move with the rest of the rest of the music to the tonic (C minor), but rather skips down to a flattened 7th (B♭)”. Leah Kardos notes how Paddy Bush’s balalaika is an essential element of the song. It comes “bursting into a shimmering, eternalized version of the glittering shards of smashed reality at the end of ‘Babooshska’”. I shall move on from the musical analysis. The inspection and investigation of the players and Bush’s vocal. The lyrics remain so powerful and inspiring.
The ability to swap places with a partner and stand in their shoes to understand them. Bush revealed in interviews how there is this greater scope for misinterpretation so that there is this misunderstanding. Making a deal with God would allow this communication and understanding. Leah Kardos argues how Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is also about penetrative sex. Rather than the spiritual and emotional, Bush talking about swapping the physical experience: “to know how it feels to be a bottom (‘Do you want to know that it doesn’t hurt me’) or a top (‘Unaware I’m tearing you asunder’)”. The act of domination and being domination. Feeling and experiencing the power of a man’s body. How that physical experience can give power and strength so that Bush (or women) can run up hills, face huge challenges and conquer any problem. Kardos notes how Bush, through her career, has portrayed through her songs a ghost, a man, a donkey and an unborn child. On the final lines of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), “this was the first time Bush had sung in the voice of an evolved, empowered, non-binary entity”. However, Leah Kardos writes how Bush composed and demoed the song in late 1983. “It was an ethereal pop masterpiece that grabs you by the body with esurient momentum. A mature and focused articulation of desire and an eternal scream for equality. It creates empathy, not only for the others that we love, but also for our multiple other selves, hidden deep within”.
The video is almost as memorable as the song. Directed by David Garfarth, we see Kate Bush and her dance partner dressed in grey Japanese hakama trouser-skirt outfits. “Her co-performer, soon after the video was shot, began her gender transition and is now named Misha Hervieu, adding a rather remarkable extra component to the subversive nature of the lyrics”. With stunning choreography by Diane Gray, the video is considering one of Bush’s finest. Hervieu lifts Bush and manipulates her body into various shapes and positions. Bush does not mine during the song. It makes it more impactful. More interpretative dance and performance than a traditional Pop music video. Very unusual in 1985. My favourite part is when Bush gestures the drawing of a bow and arrow (this mirrors John Carder Bush’s single photo for the cover). Bush intended the video to be her farewell to dance. Her moving into filmic territory. I guess you could say this lasted until maybe the video for Rubberband Girl (from The Red Shoes in 1993), when the U.K. video was Kate Bush and her dance partner twisting and turning. Ssimilar to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in some ways, but different in others. Leah Kardos states Kate Bush wrote on her website in 2023 how she hoped it would be seen as a “filmic piece of dance”. 2022 is when this song gained new life after being featured in Netflix’s Stranger Things. It passed a billion streams on Spotify in 2023. In 2022, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) reached number one in the U.K. Upon its release in 1985, the song got to number three in the charts. On 5th August, it will be forty years since this timeless and still-moving track was released. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) continues to inspire and move people. It is Bush’s most popular song and the one most people associate with her – or the only track of hers they can name. Reading Leah Kardos’s analysis of the composition and lyrics of the song goes a long way to understanding Kate Bush’s genius…
AS a producer and songwriter.