On July 9, the day before my 30th birthday, I got to check a big item off of my bucket list: to perform a concert of the music of Kate Bush. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect–not only did it align with a big moment of my life, but she has been blowing up the charts recently due to the inclusion of her song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” on the TV show “Stranger Things.”
This concert meant a lot to me; I quite honestly can’t put it all into words, and don’t necessarily want to. The performance was for sharing, but the significance of it for me will stay deep in my heart.
Kate Bush is one of my all-time favourite artists. I remember listening to her “The Whole Story” album on family road trips, which my parents had bought in a bout of nostalgia.
It was also the mixed influence of Kate Bush and my dad that introduced me to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. It was while listening to Kate Bush’s song of the same title that my dad announced the novel was one of his favourites, and being a big ol’ daddy’s girl, I immediately had to get my hands on this book. Which I ended up loving, reading multiple times throughout the years, and writing a one-woman show about.
Beyond that, Kate Bush has had an influence on me as an artist of originality and theatricality. I love the “weirdness” of her work, including the strange movie she made in the ‘90s and the amazing three-disc concert album of her “Before the Dawn” concerts a few years ago. She is one of a group of female artists who I adore for the theatrical nature of their music and the generous use of head voice (thank goodness!). Other artists in this company include Regina Spektor, Laura Nyro, and Joni Mitchell. It’s the intersection of musical theatre and pop/folk/indie songwriting that I love. It feels like music that I can really sing.
So here’s the song that started it all; Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights.”
