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“It’s really saying if there’s a possibility of being able to swap places with each other that they’d understand how the other one felt, that when they were saying things that weren’t meant to hurt, that they weren’t meant sincerely, that they were just misunderstood.”Īs she penned the lyrics, Bush initially thought she was describing a “deal with the devil,” a common storytelling trope. “It’s very much about a relationship between a man and a woman who are deeply in love and they’re so concerned that things could go wrong-they have great insecurity, great fear of the relationship itself,” Bush said in 1985. In the chorus, Bush sings, “If I only could, I’d make a deal with God / And I’d get him to swap our places.” She was thinking about the ways in which romantic partners fail to understand each other-and how that often spells disaster. When Bush wrote “Running Up That Hill” for her landmark fifth album, 1985’s Hounds of Love, she was pondering “some fundamental differences between men and women,” as she explained in a 1985 newsletter. This is largely due to the song’s timeless message about the importance of empathy. “Running Up That Hill” is arguably the most enduring and iconic song in Bush’s storied discography, which spans 10 albums released between 19. The song has long been a part of popular culture, and it’s always packed an emotional wallop. But for a variety of reasons, the resurgence of “Running Up That Hill” isn’t all that surprising.
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“It’s all really exciting!” Bush said of the Stranger Things boost in a rare public statement.
#Soundtrack for kate netflix cracked#
1 in Australia, and No, 4 in America, where Kate Bush had never even cracked the Top 20, let alone the Top 5.Ī whole new generation is now discovering the UK art-pop singer-songwriter and her thrillingly unique catalog of songs. Following the premiere of the Netflix sci-fi series' fourth season in May 2022, the song rose to No. While the song was certainly popular in its day, Stranger Things has made “Running Up That Hill” a global phenomenon. It’s no spoiler to say the moment calls for something intense, ethereal, and epic-and for that, the production knew there was really only one choice. None of these descriptors come remotely close to doing the song justice, but they help to explain why it was picked to soundtrack the climactic scene in a season 4 episode of Stranger Things. A short list of words that might be used to describe Kate Bush’s 1985 synth-pop classic “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” include: otherworldly, haunting, yearning, and profound.
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