They just announced this year’s inductees into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, and one of them is Kate Bush. I think my head’s going to explode.
Another example why the name of this “Hall of Fame” needs to be changed.
It hasn’t literally meant Rock’n’Roll since the day it opened. But we’re stuck with the name.
Even more nonsensical is inducting Willie Nelson into the Class of 2023 RnR Hall of Fame. There’s a Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. Should Tom Brady get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame?
The exact same arguments were made last year, regarding Dolly Parton (and, to be fair, Dolly initially indicated that she didn’t feel she belonged). If nothing else, Nelson is likely a big influence for many artists who more closely qualify as “rock and roll,” but he’s also had a fair number of songs which made it onto the mainstream U.S. top 40 charts.
One of which was made by me, also 
It is, effectively, the “U.S.-Centric Post-Mid-1950s Popular Music Hall of Fame,” but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
Even given that more appropriate name, I’m shocked that Ms. Bush made it.
Yeah, I can’t stand her stuff, but that’s just my opinion. In what way has she been especially successful or influential? I think she had one song make it in the US (and then make it again when it was covered/used by some TV show). I thought the RnR HoF was really US-centric, and she seems more like a UK star to me.
I do wonder, to what extent, the featuring of her song “Running Up That Hill” on Stranger Things last year, which led to it becoming a bigger hit this time around than it was originally in 1985, played a role in getting voters to re-examine her and her work.
And, yes, you’re right, though she was pretty big in the U.K., she really never was well-known in the U.S. back during the 1980s.
I would say almost entirely
What? Really?
I realize that for popular success she did a whole lot better in Europe. But she’s certainly a ‘musician’s musician’ and has influenced a lot of others. She was a trail blazer in writing and producing in an era when men decided almost everything and she went at it her very own way. She was one of the first users of the Fairlight sampler/sequenzer (she owned one). She was the first woman to have an album debut at #1 in the UK (yeah, Europe again).
Among Americans who cite her as an influence are:
Big Boi, Stevie nicks, Tupac, Suzanne Vega, Solange Knowles, Prince, Fiona Appl.
Here’s a list, that understandably skews Europe/UK, but if you think that influence is an important factor, there are very few, especially women, from that era, that achieved more.
She should’ve been inducted 20 years ago.
Yeah, in the mainstream, pretty much unknown. In college, she was revered. I went to school 1993-1998 and Kate Bush was just one of those artists that whether you even knew her work or not, liked it or not, you knew she was to be respected, a reverential figure in the alternative music scene.
On the alternative airlplay charts, she had five Top 10s, and then a #11. “Love and Anger” #1, “Running Up That Hill” #2, “Sensual Girl” #6, “Rubberband Girl” #7, “Eat the Music” #10, “Rocket Man” #11.
Same here, though my college years were in the '80s, which was the height of her overall popularity and recording. I DJed at a campus radio station for two years, and we played tracks from her Hounds of Love album a lot.
My only contribution:
I’ve remembered the melody from “Running Up That Hill” from back in the day, but never knew what it was. Then one day I heard it on the Sirius 80s channel. I thought, “Ha! That’s it!” Had no idea it was featured in a TV program, but shortly after I heard it on Sirius, I heard it again, this time over the closing credits of some 1980s/1990s movie.
Other than that, eh, Hall of Fame, Schmall of Fame.
I’m shocked because back in the 80s I loved, loved, loved her, but most Americans had never heard of her.
Her first single “Wuthering Heights” (which she also wrote) was a smash hit in the rest of the Anglophone world but for some reason never made the US/Canada charts (probably not disco enough). She was 19 when it was released.
Don Cornelius???
They are going to get some real heat on that. The man has a troubled history. In a recent series on inside Playboy there were accusations of awful things he did to Playmates. In 2008 he was charged with domestic violence, pleased no contest and put on 3 years of probation.
I think of it as more of music of “The Rock Era,” and most music that was accepted as “rock” in the '50s hardly “rocks” compared to the '60s or '80s or whatever, and a lot of golden age hip-hop and other genres definitely rocks a lot harder than many favorites of the rock gatekeepers.
Plus, Kate Bush has always been a critical darling and name-drop from musicians and other journalists, singers who wanted to look cool, etc.
Other than “Running…” - which I heard more as the Placebo cover than her original, I’ve heard her vocals on the Peter Gabriel song (don’t know if it ever was a hit, but it gets played on alternative ROCK radio all the time in my life) more than anything else she has done combined. But you know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Patti Smith song (performed by her) in my life.
I’ve loved Kate since her “Man With the Child in His Eyes” video and her appearance on SNL