Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stones hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversialist. I'm Britney Spanis and.
I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. And this week's song a classic we both love Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush.
So this song made its debut on the twenty twenty one list, became in at number sixty, which is like a massive debut for the song, and I mean, I think there's so so many reasons we can get into and again, this song making on the list came a full year before end up charting again and went to number one in the UK and a bunch of other countries around the world, and number three in the US.
We could start with the fact that even a year before we kind of saw this resurgence, the song was already kind of for voters of this list in their consciousness as one of the greatest songs of all time. So, Rob, what do you think was sort of leading up to that voting that was kind of inspiring people to reconsider Running Up That Hill as like one of the greatest songs.
Kate Bush like an artist, certainly an artist never chased after conventional pop fame at the time, Yet her mystique just grows and grows. Artists just take more and more inspiration from her. Running Up That Hill was already a huge thing on social media, like long before it blew up on Stranger Things. It was just one of those songs where the mystique just builds and just keeps making new believers wherever it goes.
What do you remember, Like your reaction to hearing Kate Bush for the first time was like what made her stand out to you? And or maybe you made you fall in love with her music right away.
She was so wild, imaginative. She had that bowie thing that I really loved. She was huge in the early eighties when she was first making synthesizer stuff after being very piano based in the seventies, so she seemed like a new wave artist, but she also had this progue past, and she had all these weird like folk music elements, and she just made the weirdest damn records. And the way you could tell that she was really schooled in that sort of seventies British glam rock. Obviously very Bowie,
obviously very Roxy music, very very very Elton. She did the best Elton cover of all time with her version of rocket Man, where she's just seeing I'm not the man they think I am an I mean, it's like, Wow, no, Kate, you are not. You're not like you are not what anybody thinks. She was just so deeply versed in the music she loves, but so original in every move she makes.
Yeah, and just like there's so much theatricality to not only her performances of course, and like the way that she presents it, because she is someone who is very conceptual with how she envisions her performances, her videos and how they kind of are translating in the songs, Like she has like this really great kind of artistic mind
in so many ways. But like the songs too, are such great narratives of course, Like Wearing Up that Hill is this amazing sort of song about like a man and woman and kind of wanting to be able to like understand each other better and like make that deal with God and like understand kind of the other person's perspective inside, and like there's just like so much of this drama to the song that comes through both in the production. Of course, she is from Hounds of Love
in nineteen eighty five. She produced the album herself, Like she wrote this song by It's just just Kate, you know, and like she's kind of has this incredibly just like theatrical kind of vision of every narrative in her songs.
It's amazing. How did this song hit you as a teenage fan who was just like discovering her music.
Yeah, I was so obsessed with this song, but I remember I owned it pretty early, and like I just I was like absolutely transfixed by It's like such a hypnotic song. I won't totally realize I've had it on for as long as I've had it on, you know, if I just kind of like let it play.
Same thing with the.
Full album, Like I feel like that album is constantly on repeat. But with Running at That Hill especially, like and I'm not paying attention and I put just that song on two hours go by, and I'm like still here, maybe to it one more time. There is such like just the way the production is so driving and kind of really gives you that sense of urgency that she's
singing about. And it's kind of like desperation, and like just the way that she's singing it, Like I don't know, there's like so much like weird like vocal inflections that she does, especially when she sings like made a deal with God and like you know, like just like the way it kind of goes a little bit lower and like a little like I don't know, She's just like does all these weird things with her voice that you always kind of unlock each time.
What's a song you can listen to your whole life without figuring it out? Yeah, there's so much, Like you said, there's so much mystery and enigma in it. And it's weld that this is her most famous song. It's it's her pop song. It's the one that actually was a top forty hit in the US. Just kind of mind blowing, let alone that it was a top forty hit. Then almost forty years later, this is Kate Bush at her most accessible, straight down the middle pop and it's still so insanely weird.
Yeah, And it's one of my favorite songs to see people karaoke because every time I've seen friends before Stranger's perform and I feel like they always do something like really fun vocally with it, like they all kind of everyone sort of has like some weird intonation of the song.
They really love the way that she sings a certain word and always try to mimic it, like it's it's kind of like that like kind of way like Shallow by Late Gaga, Like everyone kind of has like a one note that they love that they really need to hit every time they do it. So I've always really
loved that about this song. And I mean with the resurgences that we've seen with this particular song, I mean there's so many I mean, Kate Bush's discography is so incredible and we've seen it have such an influence on so many artists, And there are so many songs that have had great covers. Of course the Maxwell cover of this woman's work, and you know, there's just like so many incredible versions of her music over the years. But for some reason, people keep coming back to this song
in particular. What do you think it is about raining up that hill that keeps drawing new generations in or finding new ways of being used in media.
Well, it's such a expand song. It is such a rhythmic song. It's the one that you could pick it out that if there was a song on Hounds of Love that was going to be a top forty hit, it would be this one. And yet everybody, like you said, everybody hears something different in it, Like everybody karaoke is a different intonation in it. It means something different to everyone.
It's a constant enigma. I heard it Halloween at like four in the morning in a sleazy goth club in San Francisco, the Cat Club, and it was like on the floor, and it was like really funny to hear it in that context. Yet everybody is like communing to this like deeply weird song from forty years ago, and it fits anywhere you hear it. Yeah, something I was wondering what your thoughts about. But it seems like the Kate Bush resurgence that you were talking about of recent
years kind of simultaneous with the Stevie Nicks. You can't call it resurgence because she never went away, but the really like huge boom in the Stevie Nicks steep, especially among younger people hearing her for the first time. I wonder how connected they are, because they certainly have a lot in common as artists and in terms of their sensibilities.
They both have such and it's the same thing that we talked about like the Stevie and Dreams episode, is that they just have really distinct senses of self and style in terms of how they present themselves that is like so emblematic of a certain style of music a certain era, but also doesn't feel tied to that era.
There's that same timelessness with Kate's presentation of self but also her own music, Like they've never like neither of them have been on trend, you know, like neither of them have been sort of like had that desire to go with what was happening culturally at that moment, and that's why they were successful with their music for so
long and why their music continues to be successful. I mean even yeah, there was a two year difference between that Dreams moment and I guess really a year and a half difference between the dream Women in late twenty twenty and like the summer of twenty twenty two Running Up that Hill resurgence, and like those songs could come out at any time, Like there's nothing about Running Up That Hill that sounds like ninet eighty five, Like I guess, like the sense, Yes, but like there are so many
artists that are kind of the daughters of Kate Bush, daughters and sons of Kate Bush, that I feel like if they released this song today, if they were the ones that had written this, it would be just as successful.
Yeah.
The affinities between that moment, like you said, the huge like dreams going viral and not just running up that hill, but the whole sort of explosion in Kate bush obsession as artists, as performers. There's something kind of drag about them both, like they're over the top presentation of femininity
and that they're both definitely of their own sensibility. I mean you said, like neither seems like from any particular time or trend, and they seem almost like the more determined to be in a late nineteenth century gothic novel than anything happening in rock and roll in the twentieth century. Yeah, and yet that's a way that they mark their independence, as you know, female artists calling their own shots.
Yeah, and even just like to think about the way those two songs broke through everything, and especially ranat that Hill because Ryant that hill was on This is season four of Stranger Things that show has been big since the first season. It's a massive show, and they have a really great music supervisor who uses incredible music from the era. But for some reason, more than any other song that's been used, this one not only like charted and had a moment and became big. It topped the charts.
It was on the radio like it was back on the radio being played alongside you know, artists in their twenties who were having massive hits. You know, it's like artists that weren't even born when the song came out. Do you watch Are You a Stranger Things Fan?
Yeah?
Yeah, I thought that scene was so such a great use of it because I think people were also loving the that you know, there's a scene of Sadie Singh's character is being like possessed by something demic gorgan I don't know. She put the headphones in her ear because this is a song that's been like really centering for her. While she's greeting her brother, her body's like rising and ranging up that hill is playing, and it's like I think also everyone was just like kind of how it
feels to listen to the song. It's kind of like a great sort of representation of like I'm like sort of just like ascending in the air listening to Kate Bush and her deal with God. Like it's you know, perfect image to go with the song and also really touching and beautiful and emotional scene that was done very effectively in this you know, horror show.
Yeah, it really kind of captured the emotional power of the song in really like a beautiful and admid sort of way. And yet there are songs in TV shows every single week. Yeah, Stranger Things has done this with many songs. Lots of songs get used in a clever way and people think, ah, that's great, they don't go to the top ten. And it was just such a strange thing to happen because that basically never happens.
That strange thing, strange stranger Yes, I walked into that one, but yeah, I have this really specific, vivid memory being in a cab and they've got Z one hundred on the top forty station and it was literally it was like good as hell into like running up that hill into as it was, and.
It was like, yeah, this is what pop music is right now? Yeah, is this k Bush song that's nearly forty years old and yet doesn't fit in now, doesn't sound conventional or conformist to anything now, still not in touch with any trend. Yeah, as you said, just as it wasn't in the eighties. And it's weird that the song that is so unique and never fades into the background, but it always, it always finds a life wherever it
is and whenever it is. What are some of the other k Bush songs that are huge for you?
Prownz of Love is like one of my favorite albums of all time. I think, like back to front to back perfect And I remember kind of having this moment where I was just like, I was like, huh, what is this song? I was like, this is the most beautiful song I've ever heard in my entire life.
Well, it's wild because she has that whole really strange origin story where she's, you know, this rustic, reclusive English teenager and a tape of her songs gets to, of all people, David Gilmour and Pink Floyd, and he makes this career happen for her in the seventies and she's totally unlike anything else that is happening in British pop or British rock or anywhere on the planet in the seventies, and then in the early ladies she gets into that
fairlight synthesizer and you know, Babushka is one of the first songs to come out of that. But certainly Breathing such a pivotal single for her, and suddenly she could make all these incredibly weird sounds happen herself. Also, some things so touching about, like her making all this music with her brother, Yeah, Patty and you know, very reclusive brother, like didn't want any share of the spotlight anymore than she did. Very much like the sort of Billy and
Phineas of their day. You know this like really like brilliant like brother sister duo creating these like totally bizarre pop songs.
Yeah, I feel like I don't know that much about her and her brother. How much should they work on? Sort of in the early early days of her career, he was.
Like older and had more studio savvy, kind of like Phineas that way, But it was always her vision, her songs, her voice. Such a fantastic sort of partnership. She has always her entire career been very particular about who she works with and very loyal with people who she thrives working with Yeah, but it's it's so fascinating to see that she's had so many different sort of careers.
Yeah, And I'm curiously what you think about the people who are very clearly inspired by or influenced by Kate Bush and you both Kate Bush Like, I feel like the first one that always comes to mind to me.
First two people are like Tory Amos and Yorke even thinking about like, I don't know if Billy Billy Eilish has ever spoken explicitly about her, but you can so see a through line from Kate Bush to her and where they have this like such a perfect image of how to match the visual with their music and also just being really kind of creative with their own storytelling in that way.
Well, Prince Like certainly like comes to the top of the list for me in terms of an artists who's very much contemporary with her. They both put out their albums, their first albums around the same time when they were very very very young, still in their teens. They sort of had simultaneous careers, both doing absolutely the opposite of what anybody wanted to like. Certainly, whatever the record company hoped their next album was this one was going to
be the opposite. I think that that was a way that they certainly like On Prince's part, he certainly like felt that affinity with Kate Bush and like wrote a beautiful song about her. Was always she was like Joni Mitchell for him in terms of an artist who is a true original, who was always going their own way
and making a different album every time. Taylor Swift is also another one who she's a big about Cape Bush fan, and you could definitely see that influence in her work of just doing something different every time.
Yeah, especially the kind of the more sort of like Victorian type of like like a style of like songwriting, sort of aesthetic influence that Taylor kind of has, and you know, especially like folk or and evermore albums and here and there across her discography. But though specifically you can kind of see that like connection be the loudest on.
There totally totally. Reputation is very much like that. It's sort of like the that was the dark Kate Bush album. That was the one where her English record company was like, Okay, she had a good run, she's done. Now she's gone off the deep end and she's made this album full of you know, rage and like homicidal angst and playing all these different characters like and very much the same kind of heavy synth, industrial ish kind of thing that
Taylor was doing on Reputation. Yeah, and of course like Outcast and you know, yeah, Big Boys tribute to her so incredibly moving and evocative.
Yeah, and I mean you can so sense that kind of I don't know, that that freedom that they're inspired by in Kate Bush again, that production, that sort of like weird melody changes and kind of the storytelling like all that is so much in Outcast music. And yeah, I'm obsessed with every time Big Boy talks about Kate Bush, just because he's such like a like such a huge fan of it, of her, And I've dreamed of a a Kate Bush Big Boy moment.
I feel I feel like it'll happen. It'll be the equemini of like you're the one who would know which which which those two artists were signed.
But yeah, I think we need the We need them to. I need her to invite Big Boy to the castle. You know, he brings out I think also like to a point that you're bringing up much earlier about you know,
just the way that she writes about grief. There is so much influence on goth music and on kind of like the way that kind of like post punk and new wave developed and dark wave developed in after she debuted, Like I think, I feel like I don't know, maybe I just haven't seen as much of this discussion of her kind of influence on sort of that hol astatic on that on the music scene and all that with
goth music. But I feel like there's so much Kate Bush in the way that that sort of continued to develop over the years.
Absolutely, I think you're on ndred percent right about that. Yeah, And definitely her interest in that sort of goth obsession with the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties, you know, English people with consumption, you know, like in rooms with tendrils of ivy like surrounding them.
You know.
She she had a great song about hammer horror movies, you know, like that is her sensibility and that's that's where goth comes from.
Yeah, Like there's so much of that, like depeche Mode Kate Bush kind of through line there too.
Do you think she'll she'll make music again.
I don't think so. I think she's retired. I think she is, she's chilling now. She seems like she's always been very shy and very like just reclusive. So I feel like she's done the thing. She's seen immense success. I think she's done.
What about you, I think you're right, But you know, you never know when she's going to come back. She seemed done for so many years, and then she came back more or less out of nowhere with Ariel and it's like, oh, Kate Bush feels like making another album, Yes, please keep doing this a lot, and it's like no, she just like she just does it when she feels
like it. So I feel like it'll be like you know, David Bowie in his last years, or like Leonard Cohen in his last years, where you know, occasionally they'll come out of the garden. Oh, by the way, I've got a few new songs for you.
Yeah.
You know, she just wanted to create music and release things and not have to like leave her home. She could do that if she wanted to do, and kind of have that privacy still that she really wants, and also itch that whatever like creative thing that she may have in the future, which I mean I welcome.
Whenever I think your prediction about her big boy like making the great the goth progue album of.
The Yeah, let's get some Mandre three thousand flute on there. Let's you know, let's do all we're there, Yes, Yeah, let's just get them all there. And after the break, we'll be joined by Rolling Stone Deputy music editor Julisa Lopez. We are joined now by Rolling Stone Deputy music editor ju Lisa Lopez.
Thank you so much, thanks for having me guys greatly here.
So we're gonna we're gonna make a deal with God. And do you remember the first time you heard Kate Bush or this song.
I remember like carrying it on the radio a lot, like when I was I was a kid, But I don't think that I started kind of tapping into Kate Bush or taking an interest probably until I was like a little older.
And I know you have another top pick from the Kate Bush.
Oh, this woman's work is one of my favorite songs of all time. I think that's the one that I put on my ballot. I want to say I put Running Up that Hill on my ballot too, And I like to think that I put two Kate Bush songs in. I also am a big believer that the maxwell cover of this woman's work is like the best cover ever made in history.
I feel like for everyone I know that's a Kate bush Dan in my life, I feel like there's like such a different element that kind of pulls them in. What was it that made you kind of fall in love with her as an artist?
I think with this specific song, I mean I think that the production itself, like those like opening Sense are so haunting and like they pull you in, like you know immediately, and her voice too, like it does have like that theatrical almost like Shakespearean quality, like lyrically, like
who was writing like that? Like it's tearing me asunder, Like I don't even know that I knew what asunder meant when I was a teenager, but these lines that were just so beautiful, and I feel like it are not kind of what you would imagine getting and sort of and pop music.
Yeah, yeah, that like production of like the drums actually sounding like this kind of like running sort of motion
is just so good. Like I feel like the first time I was like, oh my god, you could just like do that in a song, Like you could like evoke this thing that that is actually happening on the song with kind of the song and how it's developed over the years and kind of seeing all of its resurgences, and also like a lot of fans of it, like what do you think has drawn people in over the decades and like kept it such a popular song but also a song that keeps finding new audiences.
I feel like everybody always talks about the sort of resurgence that came after Stranger Things put it in the show, but I forgot that there had been like another bump and the songs say after the Olympics.
I can't remember it was twenty.
Twelve, exactly a decade before.
It was just crazy.
But I do think there's a quality to it where, even though it's a song from the eighties, there is something about it that just sounds like there's a timelessness to it. But there's also like this almost futuristic quality that has always drawn me in, of like you can't totally place like when it was made and when where it comes from. In a lot of ways that I feel like it's used, especially like in the Stranger Things cameo. I think it's so much of like the actual production
of it. And I was reading too that like at the time, like Kate Bush was using like all these like incredibly cutting edge like new types of like sins and samplers, and I think you really hear that on there and kind of her just like being really forward thinking with everything that she was doing from a production standpoint.
But yeah, and then I think.
Too like part of it too is like lyrically like it is such a powerful song and just thinking about the idea of this like between two people and this like love that's like kind of like hurting these two people, and it kind of being this like Macero look at like how that is she's basically having like a gender dynamics discussion like in this song in a way that I think is still really powerful.
Yeah, of course, big Boy being a huge fan, I feel like you talk about back twelve. There's so many ways, Like there's like this like random cover by this like pop artist Liz that does cloud Bussy. I really love, Like there's like so many like weird versions of her song, like really great covers of it, but also like such like a wide range of fans across music that really look up to her or inspired by her just like
really respect and love her. I mean tell me about kind of her being sort of you know, like I feel like she's like every artist's favorite artist.
Yeah, I mean yeah, And honestly, like I like the Big Boy thing stands out to me because I was when he inducted her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I thought that was just such a sweet, perfect moment. But like even like I've talked to Rosalie a lot about her, and I feel like you can hear there's a way in which there's like a theatric in Rosalio's voice and the way that she like her phrasing that reminds me a lot of Kate Bush, and
I think that you can really hear the inspiration there. Yeah, I kind of feel like part of it too, I think is like because she is so kind of elusive and like it does always feel like so personal when you discover her. I think there's an element of that that people just like are still drawn to her and like it's like almost like this like little mystery you want to crack open. Yeah, there is like this like
other world. I think part of it is that, like because she does so little media impressed that like she feels like I don't know, like special mystery quality where and the only way that you can really get close to hers for her music.
It's wild, Like you said that her music inspires such a wide range of artists across so many fields. I mean I always think about Weathering Heights, one of her most famous songs, and how most eighties kids first started from Pat Benattar singing it, and also Sonny Shirak did a free jazz version, And I'm always like, who what an other songwriter besides Kate Bush would have a song that both Sunny shi Rock and Pat Benatar would do, And like you know, Prince had that great song about her.
She just has always inspired such a wide range of artists to sort of listen to that Cape Bush kind of voice inside them and be more extreme.
I don't know if you guys heard like the one interview she did she had like a little like radio interview and yeah, things explosion. I remember because I was in London at the time that like it was like kind of in that chart battle with as it was, so it was like the two of them were just like dueling on radio every time I was in a car, Like it was just like Harry Kate I was like okay, but like they would play that interview all the time because it was so rare for her to speak anymore,
and she was not doing anything. It was just like so like she was just like She's like, yeah, I'm just like hanging in my garden and she was like so it was like so short. She was like, yeah, like I can't believe this is happening. This is cool. She was like, I'm just you know, just hanging out at my house. And it's a huge song I love.
That could not make less difference, you know, it's really wild, and she never cared about this stuff, and it was always wild because people always get so fanatical about her, Like we said, like all these different artists from all these different eras, whereas she's always got that well, you know, if you want to make me famous, that's fine, but like she very sincerely does not care about any of
that stuff. It's always so wild. I remember in the early eighties post punk era when Johnny Rotten when he was becoming Johnny Laden, and he would always say, like rock and rolls garbage. The only rock and roll that still matters, means anything is Kate Bush and the Raincoats, and it was wild that she was someone who at that point already seemed timeless and beyond any kind of genre,
and really she was just getting started creatively. Like I mean those albums, all those albums in the eighties and nineties, like The Essentral World, the one that has this woman's work, Like it's just a perfect album.
Yeah, just like Kate do.
Your thing like Butter be in her Palace and Big Boys Imagination and she'll she'll be good.
And I think the thing too with like an album like Hounds of Love, which I think is like an absolutely perfect album. I love that album so much. It's like she is so she's such a weirdo, and like it's amazing because she's like you know, she has all these like really great like literary references and like there's like psychology references on there. There's all these things that
are happening. They're also like one of my favorite fun facts about the song cloud Busting is that there's also this Patty Smith's song called Birdland that is inspired by this like psychology book called cloud Busting by Wilhelm Reich that inspired both of these songs, which I just think is like such a weird random connection between these.
Two yeah, Kate Bush Patty Smith's book Club.
Yeah yeah, connections, but like it's like such a weird references that just like kind of our across this album. That's also incredibly poppy, you know, Like the title track is such a great pop song. It's so yeah amazing, like how much she's able to really bounce on and obviously it worked both in and now.
Yeah, yeah, I'm the big fan. And there's this I think she's Irish. Her name is Orla Gartland and she does a running up that Hill cover into Time after Time.
That is so good. Wow, it's great.
You guys should listen to it after this. It's wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Thank you for having me, guys, Thank you.
So much, Thank you, Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia Brennan. Hosted by Me, Britney Spanos and Rob Sheffield. Executive produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale and Christian Horde, and produced by Jesse Cannon with music supervision by Eric Zeiler. Thanks so much for listening.