Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights

Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and producer who's career started in 1975.

This singer is very known for her eclectic musical style and incredibly unique voice that made her one of the most successful solo female performers of the United Kingdom of the last years.

Bush is also the owner of big hits like Running Up that Hill, Babooshka and Don't Give Up.

She already won a Brit Award in 1987 for Best British Female Solo Artist, an Ivor Novello Award in 2002 for Outstanding Contribution to British music and was nominated the Grammy Awards several times.

With 10 studio albums - The Kick Inside (1978), Lionheart (1978), Never For Ever (1980), The Dreaming (1982), Hounds Of Love (1985), The Sensual World (1989), The Red Shoes (1993), Aerial (2005), Director's Cut (2011) and 50 Words For Snow (2011), besides a live album released in 1994 and some EP's.

Wuthering Heights is Kate Bush's debut single in January 1978. Taken from The Kick Inside, the song was written by Bush when she was eighteen years old and it's based on the novel with the same name.

Kate Bush was inspired to write Wuthering Heights by the last ten minutes of the 1970 movie of that novel. It's possible to see several quotes from Catherine Earnshaw (main character), specially on the chorus "Let me in! I'm so cold". She also used them to confess Catherine's confession to her master "bad dreams in the night".

This romantic scene has a sinister turn when Catherine is in fact a ghost that's calling her love, Heathcliff.

"Oh it gets dark, it gets lonely

On the other side from you

I pine a lot, I find the lot

Falls through without you

I'm coming back love, cruel Heathcliff

My one dream, my only master"

Placebo - Running Up That Hill

A few minutes ago, I was watching the first episode of the last season of The O.C. when I heard this music. It cacth my atention because I reckoned the lyrics but didn't know which band has a song similar.
I found out the name of the song and then I remembered: Within Temptation - a song I used to hear 1/2 years ago!

But then I found out it was a cover!

So... The originally song is from Kate Bush, a british singer. It was the first single from her 1985 album, Hounds of Love. First, the song was titled A Deal with God but the representatives at EMI were afraid of a bad reception due the use of the word 'God'.

Kate said about it:

• "I was trying to say that, really, a man and a woman, can't understand each other because we are a man and a woman. And if we could actually swap each other's roles, if we could actually be in each other's place for a while, I think we'd both be very surprised! [Laughs] And I think it would lead to a greater understanding. And really the only way I could think it could be done was either... you know, I thought a deal with the devil, you know. And I thought, 'well, no, why not a deal with God!' You know, because in a way it's so much more powerful the whole idea of asking God to make a deal with you. You see, for me it is still called "Deal With God", that was its title. But we were told that if we kept this title that it would not be played in any of the religious countries, Italy wouldn't play it, France wouldn't play it, and Australia wouldn't play it! Ireland wouldn't play it, and that generally we might get it blacked purely because it had God in the title."

The version I heard on The O.C. was a bit darker and it's from Placebo, released on the bonus disc of their 2003 album, Sleeping with Ghosts.



And the version I already new is from Within Temptation, a Symphonic metal band, and it was released as a separate single, in 2003. There is an explanation why WT made a cover of a song with a sound so different of what they are used to work with:

• "Well, we tried another song of Kate Bush because we had two songs that we were just playing around with because people were comparing me always with her as a similar kind of voice, and we were just fooling around in the studio and “Running up that Hill” came by. And it was like, “We really sound like this,” you know, and it turned out so well that we made a single out of it because we were between albums."

Although, I don't usually like Placebo's sound I prefer their version instead of one from one of my favorite bands, WT. The original one doesn't atract me at all.



And if I only could,
Make a deal with God,
And get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building.
If I only could, oh...

A.