Kate Bush is like the Velvet Underground in a way - even if you donāt like her, you doubtless like someone who lists her as a major inspiration. Well, unless you only listen to classical or jazz or C&W.
This is my favourite Kate Bush cover:
An old song by Gerry Rafferty titled Right Down The Line charted a few months ago when it was used on the Season 2 premier of the show Euphoria.
True, but you wonāt find this exciting music in the charts, or on the radio (at least where I live).
Iām sure you know that, but David Gilmour was the one who ādiscoveredā her and spotted her talent when she was fifteen.
Ahhhhh, that explains so much. For the last year or so my 18yo daughter has been bringing me songs she thinks we might both like (which is the most delightful thing, I must say), and a couple of weeks ago she shared that oneā¦I was mystified how she found it, but I know she watched Euphoria, so there you go.
Itās pretty trivial to dig a little deeper.
I know, I do it almost every day, my point was that by only casually listening to modern music you miss the goods.
Iām not surprised at the Kate Bush putdown here. Sheās in my Top 5 of all time, though. Wildly original and incredibly moving, with an immensely powerful discography.
And if you are like me, you dig a little deeper and never listen to the popular modern stuff. Iām finding plenty of good new music, itās certainly there. But I am utterly clueless for the most part on what the kids are listening to these days.
I loved Hounds of Love when it came out and still do. I remember a friend giving me a hard time for liking Kate Bush and not listening to his favorites Billy Squire and Asia. Pretty sure heās still listening to shitty music.
I was 14 years old when this song came out and I swear Iād never heard it before Stranger Things.
If youāre in the US, thatās not surprising. I only ever heard it on the local New Wave station in NY.
I was a DJ at our college radio station in Wisconsin when her Hounds of Love album came out. We had it on our āsuggested albumsā list (the DJs had a lot of leeway on what we could play), and after a suggestion from a friend of mine, who was a Kate Bush fan, I played āRunning Up That Hill,ā and some of the other songs from that album, on my show.
But, at that time, we were the only thing approaching an āalternativeā radio station in Madison; the other stations were top-40 pop, classic rock, or light rock. I donāt think I ever heard āRunning Up That Hillā on the pop station in town, though I do remember seeing the video on MTV a few times.
You thought Laraine Newman climbed up onto the piano and sang while Paul Shaffer played āThe Man with the Child in His Eyesā?
I donāt see why this is any excuse - I was in cultural-embargo 80s South Africa, where the airwaves were saturated by absolute dreck, and I managed to hear it just fine.
See my post 32 ā I think she simply didnāt get a lot of airplay on most of the commercial radio stations in the U.S. at that time, though she did (as I remember) get some play on MTV.
Unless you (as a U.S. resident in the mid '80s, not you, personally) were fortunate enough to have an āalternativeā or college radio station in your town, and/or were serious enough about exploring music that you sought out artists that werenāt getting played on the usual radio formats of that time (top 40, classic rock, adult contemporary, and country, for the most part), itās not at all surprising to not have encountered an artist like Kate Bush at that time.
It makes a huge difference where you are located. Just compare the British and American music charts over the decades. Itās very common for a song that was a smash in one part of the English-speaking world to be utterly unknown in another.
Before the internet, if an artist wasnāt played on the radio in your country, there was a good chance youād never even know they existed.
So do I. However Kate Bush is one of those somewhat anomalous artists where it was one and done for me. Iāve poked around the rest of her catalogue and nothing else ever really grabbed me. Of course this was literally a generation ago, so my tastes may have broadened enough for it to be worth me taking another deep dive some day.
I think this is the disconnect - Iāve never moved in music circles that relied on radio airplay as the main source of music. But especially heavily-censored, conservative early 80s South African radio
We primarily got music info from the music magazines (NME, Melody Maker) and record stores that did imports. Oh, and club DJs and 'zines. Radio was for old people.
One of the few advantages of oppressive systems - people in countries with decent radio and and an open music scene could find decent stuff without looking very hard, so they often donāt.