“Running Up That Hill,” must have a set a new record for the longest time period between a song’s release, and it reaching the American top 10. The song was originally released in August 1985, as the lead single of Kate Bush’s fifth album, Hounds of Love, which came out a month later.
“Running Up That Hill” was very successful in the months after its release in most parts of the world, but the song and the album both stalled at number 30 on the US Billboard charts. In a remarkable development, in 2022, almost thirty-seven years after its first release, the song became the most-streamed song around the world and improved on its original chart positions in almost every country.
In June 2022, the song reached to number one in the UK and many other places, and to number four in the Billboard singles charts, while Hounds of Love could be found at the top of the US Alternative Albums chart.
The amazing and sudden resurgence in popularity of “Running Up That Hill” was the result of the song being featured as a pivotal plot device in season 4 of the Netflix series Stranger Things.
Kate Bush, declared herself “astounded” by the developments, and on her web site issued the following statement: “How utterly brilliant! It’s hard to take in the speed at which this has all been happening since the release of the first part of the Stranger Things new series. So many young people who love the show, discovering the song for the first time.”
FINEST MOMENT
“Running Up That Hill” appears to have struck a deep chord with an entire young, 21st-century generation, and this clearly has to do with the formidable and timeless qualities of the song itself, which turn out to resonate with people of all generations, across several decades.
The enduring appeal “Running Up That Hill” is all the more remarkable, exactly because it is in so many respects very much an eighties song, realized on the latest electronic equipment of the day, which included a Linn drum machine, a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, and most famously, a Fairlight CMI Series II, the very first digital sampler, which at the time cost more than a house.
“Running up That Hill” was the first song Bush wrote for Hounds of Love, which is widely regarded as her finest moment. The making of the song and the album are closely connected and it’s hard to talk about one without the other. So we’ll examine how Bush created the album and its lead single, starting with a look at how Bush arrived at a point in her career that allowed her to create her magnum opus.
INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS
Kate Bush was born in south-east London on July 30th, 1958. At the age of 16 she was discovered by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, and as a result, EMI Records offered her a record contract, which she signed in July 1976.
The recordings for her first album took place during July and August 1977 at Air Studios in central London, with Andrew Powell producing, and Gilmour as executive producer. The result, The Kick Inside, was released in February 1978.
Despite objections from EMI, Bush insisted on the song “Wuthering Heights” as the first single. The song became the first UK number one that was entirely written by the female artist herself. Both the single and the album went on to enjoy major international success. [For more about “Wuthering Heights” check out our Songs That Change Music video about the song from last year.]
EMI pushed Bush to record a follow-up as quickly as possible, and Lionheart was released at the end of the same year. Again produced by Andrew Powell, with help from Bush, the album was well-received, but did not quite live up to expectations, not least of Bush herself.
EXPERIMENTATION
As a result, Bush was determined to take more control of her career, and set up her own publishing and management companies. Inspiration for a new direction was provided by her guest performance on Peter Gabriel’s third album, known as Melt in the US.
Bush sang on Gabriel’s hit single “Games Without Frontiers,” but more importantly, during the sessions at Townhouse Studios in London in the summer of 1979 she witnessed Gabriel working with digital synths and the Fairlight sampler, and she was impressed by the wild sonic experimentation of the artist and his crew.
Recordings for Bush’s third album started in September 1979, at Abbey Road and AIR Studios. Bush acted as producer, with help from engineer Jon Kelly. In contrast to her first two albums, with featured mostly a live in the studio band embellished with orchestra, she now experimented with overdubbing, and used the Yamaha CS80 synthesizer and Fairlight sampler for the first time.
The resulting album, Never for Ever was released in September 1980, and marked a distinct shift in direction, landing somewhere between art rock, prog rock and folk rock. Never for Ever became Bush’s first UK number one and also did well in many other countries..
The critical and commercial success of Never for Ever led Bush to venture more deeply into sonic and musical experimentation than ever before. She was the sole producer on her fourth album, The Dreaming, which was released in September of that year. It proved to be Bush’s most divisive album. The album also did far less well commercially.
The Dreaming has since undergone a critical re-assessment, and is regarded far more positively today. However, in the years immediately after its release, it put Bush at odds with her record company. This had a strong impact on the way she approached the recordings for her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that she decided to continue with her sonic experimentations, but at least on a number of songs fit them in a framework of more traditional and catchier song structures.
RURAL ATMOSPHERE
In the summer of 1983, Bush and her long-term partner, Del Palmer, moved out of London. Bush later said that she went through a dark time when recording The Dreaming, but the rural atmosphere of her new home contributed to a dramatic shift in mood. The first manifestation was “Running Up That Hill,” which Bush wrote one summer evening, using the Fairlight and a Linn drum machine pattern programmed by Palmer.
The striking Fairlight sound, which is based on a cello sample, apparently triggered the rest of the song. It was initially called “A Deal With God,” because the lyrics are about two lovers who make a deal with God to swap genders to be able to understand each other better.
Palmer and Bush recorded the demo of the song to an 8-track tape recorder they had at their country house, and the demo ended up providing the foundation for the mood and direction of the planned new album.
Always looking for more control over her music, Bush had by the fall of 1983 installed a studio in a barn next to the family house where she grew up in East Wickham in London. The studio was fully professional, with a Soundcraft desk, and a Studer A80 24-track tape recorder at its heart.
WORKING THE MICROPHONE
Bush and Palmer would bring their 8-track demos to the studio, and load them onto the 24-track recorder. The original 8-track elements were then used as the foundation for the final versions. In the case of “Running Up That Hill,” these were the main Fairlight sound, and the Linn drums. Fairlight string sounds were added, as well as synth chords from a Yamaha DX7.
Palmer recorded Bush’s vocals, and in an interview in Sound On Sound in 1993, he explained, “It’s all down to an overdose of compression, and the fact that she really knows how to work with it. We set her up with a Neumann U47 in the live part of the studio–brick floor and stone walls–so it’s very, very live–and then there’s loads and loads of compression on the mic.”
In 1985, Palmer would have used an 1176 or Teletronix LA2A for this. He elaborated, “What’s happening is that every time she breathes in, you can hear it, so she’s backing off from the microphone all the time, really working it. We also use a small amount of gating so you’ll get the sound of the room and then it cuts off–a bit like the Phil Collins drum sound. When it comes to the mix you don’t have to push the vocal up as high as you might imagine, because with that sound you’re getting so much high frequency.”
FUTURISTIC SOUND
The recording sessions for Hounds of Love at Wickham Farm Studio continued for two years, until June 1985. Bush had the idea to split the album in two suites, the vinyl album side A contained the Hounds of Love suite and side B The Ninth Wave. Side A contained the more accessible material, and included the album’s four singles, “Running Up That Hill,” “Cloudbusting,” “Hounds of Love,” and “The Big Sky.”
“Cloudbusting,” was released as the second single, and also became a big hit, propelled by the strings of The Medici Sextet and a remarkable video featuring actor Donald Sutherland. The overdubbing process contributed to the futuristic sound of the album, as did the fact that Palmer and Bush often loaded musicians’ performances into the Fairlight and chopped them up and re-arranged them, at the time a novel technique that today is commonplace.
After two years of hard work, Bush finally delivered the album to EMI in the summer of 1985. She later said. “I know there’s a big theory that it’s not real art unless you suffer, and I don’t believe this, because I think in some ways this is the most complete work that I’ve done. It is the best and I was the happiest that I’d been, compared to making other albums.”
The big shots at EMI certainly also were very happy when they listened to the master tapes of Hounds of Love, and realized it contained several potential hits. They wanted to release “Cloudbusting” as the first single, but Bush once again managed to convince them to choose another song, “Running Up That Hill,” though there was one potential source of friction that had to be ironed out.
The song was still called “A Deal With God,” and EMI was concerned that purely the use of the word “God” would be controversial and might lead to the song being banned in certain countries. For once Bush relented, and the single was released as “Running Up That Hill,” but on the album the full title was used, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).”
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Hounds of Love was released a month after “Running Up That Hill,” on September 16, 1985. It went straight to number one in the UK, and the critical reactions to both “Running Up That Hill” and the album were ecstatic. Hounds of Love, and Bush’s entire oeuvre, which today stands at 10 studio albums, is quoted as a huge influence by thousands of artists.
“Running Up That Hill,” with its machine drums, bright synth sounds, and a singer with big hair, perfectly captured the eighties synth pop zeitgeist, and went on to become one of the classic songs of the decade. However, it had already transcended its decade even before its new-found popularity in 2022.
Bush played the song live a number of times, and in 2012 she remixed it, with new vocals, for playback during the Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London. As a result, the remix went to number 6 in the UK charts that year.
Fast forward ten years, and “Running Up That Hill” and the music of Kate Bush are being discovered by an entire new generation. Given the excellence of the song, and of Bush’s entire oeuvre, one can only second Bush’s own words, and call the development “utterly brilliant!”