Beating About The Bush

A number of newspapers have been publishing ‘wishes as facts’ stories this week about Kate Bush’s 1985 comeback single ‘Running Up That Hill’ becoming the Jubilee Number One – despite the midweek chart having it enter at a lowly No.73.

As matters stand, there’s more chance of Kunt And The Gangs latest offering, ‘Prince Andrew Is A Sweaty Nonce’ – already in the Top 40 at No.36 – of making the top, which still amounts to less than zero. Which should be a relief for them, as it would perhaps raise awkward public questions about the hypocrisy of a band making money by taking a moral high ground as much as the mickey when their last offering at Christmas – ‘Boris Johnson Is Still A F**king Cunt’ – put thousands in the pocket of multiple convicted paedophile Gary Glitter as a co-writer.

But that’s to digress.

‘Running Up That Hill’ has been airplayed to the point of tedium owing to its use in the opener for the latest (and perhaps last) series of ‘Stranger Things’, or, that weird show best noted for the disturbing amount of sexualisation of the child actors within it by social media and the popular press not seen since the days of ‘Harry Potter’. The kids are all grown up by now, so suppose the middle age masses have to latch onto something else about the show. ‘Stranger Things’ was always just ‘The Wonder Years’ meets ‘The Twilight Zone’, nostalgia porn for Generation Cynic.

But Kate Bush in particular is someone who inspires a quite preposterous level of praise, largely from white middle class journalists, and it is hard to escape the suspicion much of this is because she’s from the ‘correct’ background as themselves.

She has achieved Supermarine Spitfire levels of adulation superflous to the facts: a mere seven Top Ten hits (one shared with Peter Gabriel) – her last one being seventeen years ago, in itself her first since that duet with Gabriel nineteen years before. She even managed to win Best Female Artist awards during the 80s despite having not released anything new for years – it becomes less of a mystery once you learn in those days these ‘awards’ were often decided not by a public vote, but by panels of journalists. Her albums certainly sold by the platinum-load, but have you ever met anyone who actually plays them? Kate Bush ‘fans’ appear to be something akin to a cargo cult who buy her albums in religious adulation, wax lyrical about how much she is ‘above pop music’

For all the platitudes belched about ‘strong women, less sexism in music’, it’s strange the top icon for these White Knights Of The Habitat Table for decades has been this doe-eyed doctor’s daughter, who looked like she’s never had a pimple in her life and sang like a bar of Galaxy chocolate – unfathomable creamy and smooth, pleasantly sweet, but more than a little cloying if too much consumed at once.

Soundwise, Kate Bush made records for people whose attention spans couldn’t handle classical music or its bastard offspring Prog. Which is perhaps hardly surprising, considering it was David Gilmour being good friends of her parents which gave her that early career start (including producing her demos). EMI, at that time in real trouble due to poor business choices, had little choice but to mollify stars such as the Pink Floyd guitarist (especially as the band’s contract was due for renewal).

Even at that tender age, Bush could bask in her clear privilege knowing full well she could merrily blow EMI’s sizeable advance to her on ‘interpretive dance’ and mime lessons for zero return on their investment. They’d no choice – besides, very soon they’d be begging her to give them something to sell.

‘Pub rock’ – the antecedent of Punk – showed the times were a-changing as the economy and society soured, and most of EMI’s active roster caught outside when the cultural nuke of punk exploded were vapourised.

To those who still dismiss punk as an overblown event – as indeed parts of it were (especially The Clash) – consider that even Cliff Richard, less than a year since ‘Devil Woman’ had given him one of his biggest global hits, failed to chart with seven singles and three albums in a row straight after the furore created by the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save The Queen’: It was not until the summer of 1979 when punk’s storm had passed that he became ‘acceptable’ again.

It was only those like Bush with the sense to stay in shelter until the novelty value of acts based on how bad they were wore off (and, unlike Cliff Richard and Steve Harley, keep their mouths shut about it).

Ironically, Bush’s wild eyed stage and video antics helped place her within the New Wave/Punk camp – and with EMI staring oblivion in the face, were only too willing to throw their still considerable business clout behind the only trump card it had left to play. Kate Bush was just Lene Lovich (who predated her, and whose ‘bonkers bird’ persona  she ripped off wholesale …) for Guardian readers and “nice” people who wanted something to show they weren’t humourless old fuddy duddies about punk – as well as the sort whose interest in a recording artist is more as a fantasy copulation opportunity (as mercilessly parodied by ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’s Kate Bush piss take ‘England My Leotard’.

She has achieved Supermarine Spitfire levels of adulation superflous to the facts: a mere seven Top Ten hits (one shared with Peter Gabriel) – her last one being seventeen years ago, in itself her first since that duet with Gabriel nineteen years before. She even managed to win and retain Best Female Artist awards during the 80s despite having not released anything new for years – it becomes less of a mystery once you learn in those days ‘awards’ were not decided by a public vote, but by panels of journalists.

Bush has inspired preposterous level of praise, largely from white middle class journalists, and it is hard to escape the suspicion much of this is because she’s from the ‘correct’ background as themselves, and shares much the same pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness as the Mark Lawsons and other such Middle England Home Counties wankers for whom she’s their Virgin Mary.

For all the platitudes belched about ‘strong women, less sexism in music’, it’s strange the top icon for these White Knights Of The Habitat Table for decades has been this doe-eyed doctor’s daughter, who looked like she’s never had a pimple in her life and sang like a bar of Galaxy chocolate – unfathomable creamy and smooth, pleasantly sweet, but more than a little cloying if too much consumed at once.

Unlike Siouxsie Sioux – part Catwoman, part High Priestess – both sinister and compelling, the comically subversive Poly Styrene, or the openly nutty-as-squirrel shit Lene Lovich who fronted less a band than henchmen ready to instigate her next Evil Plan without question, Bush was and remains about as threatening as a spring lamb.

Yes, her albums certainly sold by the platinum-load, but have you ever met anyone who actually plays them? Kate Bush ‘fans’ appear to be something akin to a cargo cult who buy her albums in religious adulation, wax lyrical about how much she is ‘above pop music’, before filing them away never to be played again. There’s a dreadful feeling that – behind the claptrap about her ‘innovativeness’ – Bush’s star has forever rested of being a stereotype of women as sugar and spice and all things nice with a touch of ego-masturbating pseudo-intellectualism thrown in to please the feminists. No wonder she was the stencil upon which J.K. Rowling based Hermione Granger, right down to her burst couch hair.

In that, in some respects there’s a certain irony to ‘Running Up That Hill’s chart reprise being the subject of the usual inane gushing about Bush, coming from the ‘Hounds Of Love’ album when – in a carbon copy of the events which had led to The Clash’s ‘Combat Rock’ – her fed up record company told her to make a mainstream accessible album in order to pay off the crippling debts sustained by an unsellable previous album (‘The Dreaming’ – when she discovered the hard way she wasn’t Peter Gabriel with latex tits after all), or find herself a new label and pay back their last advance.

Bush wanted the (admittedly superior) ‘Cloudbursting’ to be the lead single (which sounded not only exactly like her early albums, but had shades of the style later made famous by Bjork, and whose career eerily followed largely the same trajectory: ie. disappear up her own arse preluding career crash), but after five singles stiffing in a row she was in no position to dictate terms.

Already her journalist disciples are rewriting history to be the other way around, with EMI wanting ‘Cloudbursting’ but Bush insisting on ‘Running Up That Hill’. The trouble with attempting to rewrite history before it has happened however is one they will have more difficulty explaining away.

P.S. The BBC later made sure that Kate Bush got to Number One by rigging their own chart!

Harry Styles lost what should have been another two weeks at Number One to a song that wasn’t even selling in record shops, but simply being ‘streamed’!

Once again, the culture being hijacked to suit the whims of the white Home Counties Guardian reading middle classes.