Off Topic Sunday is here, and the off topic today is Kate Bush.
You may have already heard the good news: 37 years after its release, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill has hit number one in the UK charts after being featured on the 80s-centric Netflix show Stranger Things. Amazingly, this is only her second UK number one, after Wuthering Heights way back in 1878.
Sorry, typo, I meant 1978.
Thing is, while Running Up That Hill is of course fantastic, Kate deserves a lot more than a mere two #1 hits. Here are some other songs by her that in a better world would have all been number ones.
And the wackiest video of them all, though the song itself is unironically great.
Enjoy! And poke around on YouTube yourself; there are lots of alternate videos for these and many other of her songs.
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@Krasnaya Koshka:
Whoa, you have cats in your banya?
…
Wait … what’s a “banya”?
Love Kate, but my favorite album is The Dreaming, from which some of your song clips hail. And I like her work before that more than her work after it, even Cloudbusting. The songs on her first 4 albums all have stronger melodies, in my view. The video of the 1979 Live at the Hammersmith Odeon concert is breathtaking, if you can find it. It appears to be out of print. In fact, it may never have officially been in print. My DVD of it looks to be of dubious provenance, although I bought it from a legit seller yonks ago. Her collection of music videos up through The Dreaming is also excellent, and was officially in print at one time. I have it on both VHS & DVD.
@Bill Reynolds You have excellent taste. The Dreaming is outstanding! The entire album.
I couldn’t possibly choose my favorite Kate album. I remember when The Sensual World came out. I had connections at EMI Music so I got it a year before it was officially released and I didn’t “get” it. That was always the way with Kate. She’s always been ahead of me. Much like 50 Words for Snow, The Red Shoes and Aerial. At first, what? And later ecstasy, without the tablets or powder.
@Alan: So down there in the footnote, “et al.” obviously is short for “and alan”. š
Last week was objectively 100% terrible, so when driving around, I had the 80s radio station on. Leading me again to ponder the age-old question, “Just how does that work, that guilty feet have got no rhythm? The mental distress is such that normal functioning stops? Can the guilty hands still tap out a rhythm? Or is it only a foot problem? Doesn’t that make it hard to walk as well?”
(There are some VERY long red lights along my path. Lots of time to think idly.)
@Krasnaya: Is your banya full of cat hair? I’d never get mine out of it. Just don’t go all Princess Olga on anyone.
British New Wave yielded a veritable bumper crop of energetically quirky ladies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIJOO__jVo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-1xrrxek7g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWhK_UoxCVg
“Wuthering Heights”- what a wonderfully otherworldly song. I’ll have to check out the others- I listened to “Running Up the Hill” and actually didn’t like it that much. Oh well.
@GSS ex-noob:
Once, when I was working in an office where a co-worker kept the radio tuned to a station that played the song daily, I muttered āhere come those rhythmless guilty feetā as I heard the saxophone intro yet again; but I donāt think anyone heard me.
@ full metal ox
I love you to bits; but I have a shedfull of work on at the moment. And you posting all this cool music is not helping my time management!
But also…
@Alan
I thought it was Dirk Gently.
I almost missed a Kate Bush thread? Oh thank goodness! I’m also pleased as punch to find more of my peoples here, as “The Dreaming” is my favorite album as well. I remember well all the bands and performers that my stepfather got me into. Kate Bush, Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre (who is absolutely spellbinding in concert). I think he regrets never getting me hooked on Moby Grape though.