New Order formed in 1980 after the three remaining members of the post-punk band Joy Division lost their lead singer Ian Curtis to suicide. Success wasn’t instant for New Order with the start of the new band. New Order’s sound was distinct from Joy Division’s with the inclusion of keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and a growing penchant for synthesizers and electronic dance music. The band’s breakthrough success came prior to the release of their second record, Power, Lies & Corruptionwith the release of their long-play (12″) single “Blue Monday,” which took dance clubs around the world by storm, and even helped to fund the band’s own dance club in Manchester called The Haçienda, a dance club named after the word for a Spanish plantation.
I SEE A SHIP IN THE HARBOUR. New Order spent time in the clubs in New York listening to the latest disco prior to recording their Power, Lies & Corruption. According to lead singer Bernard Sumner, the music in those clubs produced tones he had never heard before. The band then set a new goal: they wanted to produce a hit that could be heard in the dance halls. So the band got to work back in England at one of Pink Floyd‘s studios using outdated ’70s recording technology to produce their ultramodern 1983 classics. “Blue Monday” was a feat of layering rhythms and synthesizers. The band felt that the song didn’t fit musically or thematically on their second record, so they decided to release the song as a 12″ single prior to the LP’s release. “Blue Monday” was a smash hit and became the biggest selling 12″ single of all time. The band received mainstream success in the UK, even performing on Top of the Pops. But because “Blue Monday” relied so much on programming, it wasn’t a very interesting song to watch live. “Blue Monday” uses repetition and slight variance in that repetition to keep the audience in a trance like state. The 7:29 song was a barrier for listening for me at first, but now I barely notice that the time has passed!
I THOUGHT I WAS MISTAKEN. Like most of New Order’s songs, the lyrics are only a distant second to the importance of the music. The lyrics about a narcissistic listener who gaslights the speaker starts to become clear with more listens. Sumner said that the title comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, but the lyrics don’t seem to match the book’s themes. Blue Monday is a day, according to pop psychology, on which many suicides take place. Blue Monday is the third Monday of the year, and after the excitements and disappointments from the holiday season coming to an end, may people experience a sadness or depression strong on that day. Of course, being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, that prevents me from covering “Blue Monday” on that day. But learning today how the song’s bequest on electronic music make it worth breaking my usual convention of covering songs on the most appropriate day. The song that was created by a band composed of heterosexuals inspired by the music of gay clubs. The track becomes a huge hit in clubs both gay and straight, and establishes New Order, not as hit making machine, but a creditable dance/rock band nonetheless. “Blue Monday” becomes the standard for DJs from the ’80s to today, influencing Pet Shop Boys to Skrillex. In a way, the song helped to define the EDM music of multiple eras and has been interloped in songs such as Britney Spears‘ “Work Bitch” and more notably in Rihanna‘s “Shut Up and Drive.” I guess with beats like this, it’s not an average Monday after all!
Live:
Single version (1983):
1988 music video:
Symphonic version from Wonder Woman 1984:
Trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 featuring symphonic version of “Blue Monday”:
The story behind “Blue Monday” Transmissions Episode 8: “Blue Monday”:
After a hugely successful album cycle with X, Ed Sheeran began writing his follow up. On X, many of Sheeran’s lyrics focused on the lifestyle a pop star falls into when he comes to fame. Personal songs about life on the road, drugs and alcohol, and relationships and flings with other stars were mostly absent on the singer’s story-centric first record +. As far as relationships, X offers us an insight into his long-distance relationship with Nina Nesbitt in “Photograph” and heartbreak with who is rumored to be Ellie Goulding in “Don’t.” Then there was the ballad “Thinking Out Loud,” a song about his girlfriend at the time, Athina Andrelos. The song shows a Sheeran thinking about the days after his youthful fame and the person he would share that post-fame world with.
WE WERE JUST KIDS WHEN WE FELL IN LOVE. But when Ed Sheeran found love, it wasn’t with a movie star or a fellow singer-songwriter. The first track that Sheeran wrote for his third record ÷, “Perfect,” is a song about falling in love with his future wife, Cherry Seaborn. The two had gone to school together, Seaborn had moved to New York. Sheeran reconnected with Seaborn and in 2015, they started dating. After the whirlwind success of ÷, Sheeran and Seaborn married in 2019. “Perfect” is a sweet wedding song, which, like “Shape of You” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, unlike the album’s lead single, “Perfect” is overshadowed by “Shape of You,” which is ranked as the #1 song of the decade on Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart. “Perfect” has two famous remixes (see below), today’s version “Perfect Duet,” a duet with Beyoncé and “Perfect Symphony,” a duet with Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli. Beyoncé adds a female perspective on Sheeran’s song. Even though the lyrics remain the same as the original, listeners can recall the ups and downs of Beyoncé and Jay-Z‘s relationship and how they have made it work. It doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to write a love song that will be remembered with the likes of Elton John to have a blessing from the modern goddess herself.
DARLING, YOU LOOK PERFECT TONIGHT. I didn’t like love songs before I was in love. There were a few exceptions like the NoiseTrade Valentine’s Day Sampler and the songs of Copeland. Love always seemed out of reach until I realized that I was worthy of love. Before I found love, though, it felt like the people who wrote love songs were just flaunting their relationships. But I realized something today. In 2014, when I finally accepted my sexuality and started dating, I remember an awkward early date. The guy was a bit older and it was pretty clear from the only time we met that we were in completely different places: he was looking for something that would turn into something more serious, I didn’t know what I wanted other than to experiment and find a way for my faith and my sexuality to coexist. Over Thai food, I asked him what he was looking for. “Honestly, I just want someone who I can eat chips in bed with.” Today, my partner and I were hungry between lunch and dinner so he brought some potato chips and we ate them in bed. No, it’s not the same guy. No, I wasn’t ready for that in 2014. I realize that writing this flaunts my relationship, and to me and others like me in the past, present, and future, I’m sorry. But love should be celebrated.
Stephen Christian under the appellation of Anchor & Braille released their third record, in February of 2016. Stephen Christian said in an interview that he imagines a movie scene for his Anchor & Braille projects, and the title Songs for the Late Night Drive Homeis descriptive of that movie scene. The electronic sounds imagine an urban setting–New York’s “Lower East Side,” Los Angelo’s’ Silver Lake, Orlando–anywhere that, during the day cars would fill the streets. But the late night drive home is peaceful. You’re in your car driving past the empty office buildings for 34:23 seconds past midnight.
KISS ME LIKE YOU STILL BELIEVE. Songs for the Late Night Drive Home is a kind of closing of the Stephen Christian electronic era, which started with Anberlin‘s Vitalin 2012. In some ways, Vital was like the band had just discovered synthesizers. The band had scarcely used keys or synthesizers on their five records prior to Vital. Christian cited M83 and Washed Out as influences on Vital and Beach House and Washed Out as influences on the more chillwave Songs for the Late Night Drive. The band’s sixth record Vital and its expanded edition Devotionoffered a wide range of songs, from the electronic auto-tuned adventure of “Self Starter” and the lead single “Someone Anyone” to the dancey “Intentions” to the etherial “Other Side.” Then there was the experimental one-take improvised vocals on Devotion’s “IJSW.” The song was recorded and produced by Paper Route‘s Chad Howat. Paper Route had opened on The Tour de Vital in 2013 and both Howat and Paper Route’s lead vocalist JT Daly worked with Anberlin on their repackaging of Vital, Devotion. Howat’s contribution was the most chillwave version of Anberlin, a song that showed off Stephen Christian’s skills as a pop singer. Daly’s contribution were two remixes on Vital: The Remixes, a record in which Anberlin even dabbled with dubstep.
I KNOW IT’S HARD BUT YOU’VE GOTTA HOLD ON TO SOMETHING. Butwhile Anberlin and Anchor & Braille may have experimented with electronics and fully committed with Vital, Devotion, and Songs for the Late Night Drive Home, it seems that the electronic-based music is out but electronic elements is in. By Anchor & Braille’s Tension record, Christian chooses the organic sounds of guitar and piano. By Anberlin’s Lowborn, the band blends electronics into the mix. From the band’s latest singles, “Two Graves” and “Circles,” it seems that electronics are still a big part of a now heavier sounding band. But unlike the seriousness and heaviness of post-Vital Anberlin, the mood of most of the songs on Songs for the Late Night Drive Home, with the exception of “Detroit Stab” and “Fatal Flaw,”are uplifting. Today’s song, “Nightfall,” is a love song, in a sense. Closing the first half of the record, the song is about holding onto someone. The speaker comes to the realize “how lost we are when we find that no one’s found.” Coming to realize that everything is kind of messed up, the speaker finds that holding onto a loved one will restore his belief.
Formed when the lead singer of Korean rock band Eastern Sidekick‘s lead singer Oh Ju Hwan (오주환) started working with Zee (지) of From the Airport to produce a synth-based solo project, ADOY the project quickly turned into band with drummer Zozo (조조 or Cho Sang Yeon/ 조상연) and Ju Hwan’s high school friend Jang Da Young (장다영) joining the band. In an interview with Arirang (see below), Ju Hwan explains that the band got the name for the band by reversing the letters of his cat Yoda’s name, hence ADOY is simply Yoda backwards. He goes on to explain that Yoda played a pivotal role in determining the band’s sound.
ALL THE COLORS LOOK BACK. ADOY formed in 2016 and their debut EP Catnipwas released in 2017. The album’s name relates to the role that Yoda played in helping the band determine their sound. When the band wrote their first songs, they determined which songs would go on the album by how Ju Hwan’s cat Yoda responded to those songs. If Yoda liked the songs, they put them on Catnip. The band determined that the songs that Yoda didn’t like would be scrapped. The result is a six-track EP of ebullient synth-pop. From the chill, melancholy guitars on “Grace,” the radio-ready anthem “Don’t Stop,” the psychedelic guitar on “Laika,” and finally to today’s song, the early-’90s sax solo “San Francisco,” cats won’t be the only creatures addicted to Catnip. A self-proclaimed “commercial indie” band, ADOY set their sights both on the Korean Indie market and playing festivals abroad. While the band will probably never be the next BTS, they are embodying a popular sound worldwide–the new retro or newtroas it’s called in South Korea. While K-pop groups may incorporate this newtro sound, the aesthetic is often better carried out in bands and graphic design. Bands like ADOY certainly have a sound that fits in with international acts.
LADY FLOWERS ON MY HILL. I would say that ADOY’s English lyrics are generally stronger than Zee’s other band, From the Airport. All four members of ADOY are credited songwriters on their songs, and it seems that the input of four members yields stronger songwriting. However, the lyrics to today’s song, “San Francisco,” feel a bit like purple prose. The lyrics feel like an impression of the city and the music feels like a rerun of a ’90s sitcom set in San Francisco. Maybe Full House? And this pushes me into a Carly Rae Jepsen tangent, a songwriter who covered the Full House theme song and who also writes songs based on emotions rather than facts. But today’s song references flowers and “prima donnas and dancers” whom “little brother resemble[s].” I imagine a beautiful park filled with flowers–California lilacs, sea lavender, Douglas iris, malva rosa–and drag queens. And as the day is done, and the sun sets, the sexy saxophone ushers you back to your hotel room. Sort of like Laura Linney‘s Mary Ann Singleton in Tales of the Citywe are just tourists here for a brief moment before we go back to our conservative hometowns and talk about that one liberating experience we had in San Francisco. The city was fun, but who can afford the rent?
If you namedropJimmy Eat Worldin a casual conversation, people might look at you funny. The name sounds like its origins: two little kids teasing each other. Though fronted byJim Atkins,he is not the “Jimmy” who “eat[s the] world,” but rather it was an insulting picture guitarist Tom Linton‘s little brother, Ed, who drew a picture of his slightly older brother Jimmy looking so fat that he was “eat[ing]the world.” Jimmy Eat World is a band’s band. They are responsible for influencing everyone in punk, pop punk and even hardcore punk in the last 20 years. Best known for their song “The Middle,” a top 40 pop hit, the band spun several singles throughout the years, even today. Their most commercially successful albums have beenBleed American(2001),Futures (2004), andChase This Light(2007).
ARE YOU DIZZY YET?I’ve talked about the burnout I’ve experienced as a teacher. Burnout is very common with teachers, and I’m sure that most of us are experiencing it in a time with so much uncertainty. But there’s a dizzy feeling that comes at the end of the school week, especially at the end of the semester. It’s the papers piled on my desk. It’s the documents I forgot to print before class. It’s fifty questions before the lesson starts. It’s the chaos the students can spin the class into as the technology doesn’t work. It’s the “teacher, can I go get my phone to do the Google Classroom assignment,” five minutes before the end of class. It’s the schedule changes because the special programs that just came up. It’s the repeated cancelation, which trains the students “this class doesn’t really matter.” It’s the clicking and grading of classes that all look the same. It’s the Monday to Friday boxed into the routine that if you break it, you fall behind. It’s the deciding if it’s cutting my cleaning time, my study time, my exercise time, or my blog time so that I can get to sleep on time to manage the next day. It’s the feeling that I used to have everything so together, but now I feel like it’s unravelling. It’s dizzying.
JESUS, IS THERE SOMEONE YET WHO GOT THEIR WISH? “Dizzy” ends the standard edition of Chase This Light. It’s a ballad about a break up that comes from the exhaustion of a dizzying relationship. The lyrics portray disconnect by calling on a payphone and the listener not answering the phone. On a surface listen, this is the classic break up because of the physical distance between tow lovers because one guy is in a band and constantly on tour, not home with the girl. Adkins, in exasperation asks, “Jesus, is there someone who got their wish” meaning that everyone has to deal with the conflicting wishes, i.e. love and money. For me, though, this song has a more symbolic meaning. To me the song is about giving up on a dream. Sometimes it’s important to power through and make it work, but other times it’s important to acknowledge that your dreams may be at odds with each other and it’s time to let one of them go. I don’t know what that means for me as I reevaluate my life and my goals this time of year.
The model for Boyce Avenue‘s success was simple: choose a current top 40 track and release a cover in their own style. YouTube would list their videos below the original song and suggest more of their songs on the side banner. Starting their YouTube channel in 2007, they were on the ground floor of the viral marketing. And with international tours and constantly releasing content, the band continues to have a large following on streaming services. The band hasn’t released a full-length project since 2020’s Cover Sessions, Vol. 6, but have been releasing singles in 2021 and 2022, including today’s song, a cover of Rihanna‘s 2012 hit, “Diamonds.”
Image captured from the James Webb Space Telescope from NASA’s Flickr account. Source.
PALMS RISE TO THE UNIVERSE. It’s difficult not to think about the children’s song “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” particularly the line: “like a diamond in the sky,” when I hear any version of Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” The chorus says, “we’re beautiful like diamonds in the sky.” The song gives a very distant feeling. The speaker choses happiness which might mean separation from a loved one. The speaker and the listener are beautiful with space between them, perhaps with the 13 billion light years between them like the trending photos from the James Webb telescope. While stars are “like a diamond in the sky,” actual diamonds are more common in space than Earth as the conditions of pressure and heat are found naturally on planets with a higher gravity than Earth’s and hotter temperatures. Because diamonds and graphite are
chemically identical, my high school science teacher often scoffed at the idea that he had to buy his girlfriend a diamond ring to propose to her. And given that diamond culture was created by a jewelry company in the 1930s and sold to us with keen placements in movies and advertising, starting with Marlyn Monroe declaring “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” De Beers marketed diamonds to us, setting the standard of how much to pay for the engagement ring. In 1930, one month’s salary. In the 1980s, it became two months. In the ’00s, my science teacher would have been expected to fork over three month’s salary.
FEEL THE WARMTH, WE’LL NEVER DIE. One of the memories I have with this song comes from an Australian TV show called Please Like Me. The show is centered on awkward 20-something Josh (played by Josh Thomas) as he deals with finding love after realizing that he is gay. In the second episode of the final season of the show, Josh and his friends and the guy he is dating, Arnold (Keegan Joyce), at the time go on a camping trip. Through out their relationship, Josh and Arnold seem to be completely out of sync. On the first night of the camping trip, Arnold brings his guitar and starts singing “Diamonds” (see the clip below). Keegan Joyce who plays Arnold is actually a professional singer and the performance is not that bad, but the eye rolling between the other characters makes the scene oddly relatable for anyone who’s been on a camping trip with that guy. Of the three songs in the episode, Rebecca Black‘s “Friday,” Arnold playing “Diamonds,” and the ending of the trip listening to Justin Bieber‘s “Love Yourself,” “Diamonds” serves as maybe the most memorable part of the show that I watched years ago. The show is worth a watch to American viewers who have never tried an Australian show.
Olly Murs is an English pop star who got his start in 2009 by coming in second place on the sixth season of the British music talent show, The Voice.Since then, all but one of the singer’s albums have topped the UK album charts. But it wasn’t until his third record in 2013, Right Place Right Timethat the singer scored a Hot 100 hit in the United States. The song “Troublemaker” features rapper Flo Rida and peaked at #25 on the the Hot 100. Murs released an American version of Right Place Right Time which featured another U.S. hit: “Heart Skips a Beat” featuring Chiddy Bang.
THE ANIMAL INSIDE ME WANTS TO TASTE YOUR LOVE. The follow up to Right Place Right Time, Never Been Betterfeatured guest performances by Demi Lovato on the hit “Up” and Gym Class Heroes‘ Travie McCoy on the song “Wrapped Up.” But none of the songs were hits in America. In the ’10s, Murs songs were played outside of the UK. Korean English radio shows played Murs, and although he was less popular than some of the bigger American stars, he was played in Korea more than America. Today’s song “Deeper” comes from Murs’ 2016 record, 24 HRS. Whereas Never Been Better has an in-your-face pop energy, the songs on 24 HRS lean towards electronic and smooth R&B. Also unlike Never Been Better, 24 HRS doesn’t feature credited big-name pop singers to pander to American crossover. Murs. On 24 HRS, Murs writes solid pop hooks that don’t rely on being overly ostentatious. “Deeper” is the sixth track on 24 HRS. The song was cowritten with renowned songwriter Clarence Coffee, Jr., producer Steve Mac, and Chelcee Grimes, who also features on the track, singing the chorus.
GETTING SO DEEP, IT’S HARD TO BREATHE. “Deeper” is a beautiful love song about falling deep in love with someone. It’s a very feel-good track that alludes to the heat of the middle of the summer. The music’s chords and instrumentation give the song a tropical feeling to it, and when Chelcee Grimes sings the chorus, it feels like this song takes you on vacation. I chose today’s song for that very feeling. Although Korea’s June and July is pretty dreary, being in the middle of the monsoon, I’m trying to imagine what an actual summer vacation would look like. You know, if school would actually get out for the summer. It’s a week of lolling in a chair next to the pool with a cocktail. Beautiful people distracting me from reading a book every now and then. Hop in the pool to cool off and head back to the suite, put a towel down on the chaise and continue reading until the most intense part of the sun has passed and head back to the pool. Yes, my two-week vacation is coming up, but this year still seems quite depressing compared to freer years. So, in the middle of the work day planning post-exam activities and writing comments, it’s nice to have that piña colada of an escape in the form of a song.
This July, as many American have celebrated Independence Day, I think it’s important to look at different versions of the American Dream. Lana Del Rey‘s 2012 record Born to Die examines “the dark side of the American dream” at times. While America is starting look more like it’s Puritanical heritage with a little too much Flannery O’Connor and Homer Simpson pseudo-religiosity, the Northeastern secular world that Del Rey paints on her debut album seems like a world apart from a neo-conservatism. Del Rey’s America is the America of Hollywood. It’s New Yorkers who vacation Upstate in the summer and attend cocktail parties on the weekend. If they go to church, it’s infrequent and not an evangelical version of Christianity. It’s the America of the Jazz Age and the fifties.
ALL MY FRIENDS TELL ME I SHOULD MOVE ON. But it’s also the America of Mad Men.Del Rey has been criticized for sometime avowing an opposition to feminism. In 2014, the singer said in an interview with Fadermagazine, “For me the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept. I’m more interested in . . . SpaceX and Tesla.” The relationships portrayed in Born to Die are certainly problematic. But raising an issue with them is difficult because the details are often so over the top and outwardly problematic that they are hard to take literally. Lana Del Rey is clearly not a role model, but becomes one ironically. And all of this is filtered through another layer of irony: Lana Del Rey is a persona of the artist Elizabeth “Lizzie” Grant. And, while in persona of Lana is Grant, but it’s difficult to say whether or not Grant is Lana Del Rey under the makeup or if there is some cognitive distance between the two. Like with many artists, it’s difficult to crack the true meanings behind the songs. With Del Rey listeners have a layer of fiction often not imposed by other musicians.
I WISH I WAS DEAD. I’ve heard a theory that Born to Die hinges on the song “Dark Paradise,” the album’s seventh track. This is song is the chilly November rainstorm of an otherwise May to September record. The song alludes to the death of a former lover. However, with Del Rey, it’s hard to tell if this was literal or symbolic. The death of this lover, whether or not he were the same abusive lover sung about elsewhere on the record, propitiates the Del-Rey lifestyle elsewhere on the album. It’s the tragic backstory answering why Del Rey is the way she is. Today’s song doesn’t rely much on the golden age of Hollywood, the Beatniks, ’60s swingers, cocktail parties, the Jazz Age, or any other Del Rey trope on the record. Del Rey fastidiously studied the archetype of the heart of the trope–it’s the James Dean or Kurt Cobain figure who died too young, leaving the heartbroken lover behind to pick up the pieces of her life. Del Rey confesses that “I wish I was dead,” like him, but the ambiguity of being “scared that you won’t be waiting on the other side” brings her down to the ocean, like a siren, to sing the song for the dead. If this interpretation of the record is correct, then Del Rey does move on, but continues to live a life of self destruction continued into her next record Ultraviolence. Very simply, the song brings up the topics of grief, the possibility of life after death, and salvation vs. damnation. But in the context of the album that in ways sets out to be the next great American novel, it’s hard to separate this song from a larger context in that Del Rey is an American woman or that she is America itself in all of its idols and hypocrisy.
If you listen to Third Eye Blind‘s A Collection, the band’s greatest hits compilation, half of the songs on the compilation come from the band’s first self-titled record. The San-Francisco-formed rock band scored their biggest hits in the late ’90s, taking alternative rock stations by storm with their edgy lyrics and pop-rock that sometimes flirts with hip hop influences. The final single, “Jumper,” from an album full of songs about sex and drugs is the story about a friend of the band’s manager who committed suicide when he was in high school. In an interview with Songfactslead singer Stephan Jenkins talks about how the song transformed from a lament to a song of empowerment.
ICING OVER A SECRET PAIN. In the Songfacts interview, Jenkins talks about how “Jumper” was originally “a noir about a guy who jumped off a bridge and killed himself because he was gay.” But the song doesn’t sound like a dark tune. Like most of the songs on the first Third Eye Blind album, catchy upbeat guitar hooks with Jenkins energetic lyrics masked the tragedy behind the song. The music video for the song further obscures the meaning behind the song. The band is playing at a house party. The video uses a contrast of bright and dark colors and is stylized with a speed-up/slow-down film speed. By the end of the video, Jenkins, at the house party, sings directly to one of the characters the video follows, seemingly offering him encouragement. Jenkins talks about how the song went from “darkness to levity.” The song about bullying transformed from a song about wishing you could say something more to convince a person not to take their life to an anthem of understanding that people care.
IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE ME AGAIN, I WOULD UNDERSTAND. Jenkins goes on to talk about how a new generation of fans coming to Third Eye Blind shows. “There are all kinds of races and LGBT couples” coming to the shows. But while Jenkins takes hope in the changing of attitudes that caused a young gay man to take his life when the band’s manager was growing up, Jenkins does admit in the 2015 interview that “there are a lot of backwards fuckers out there . . . including the entire Republican Party.” Which brings up the time that Third Eye Blind made national news for playing at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when the Republican National Convention was also in town. Many Republicans in town went to see the show of nostalgic ’90s rock, but were confronted by Jenkins’ preaching against major Republican platforms. For the song “Jumper,” Jenkins reportedly said, “We believe in tolerance and acceptance.” This was followed by booing from the crowd. Building a better tomorrow has certainly hit a snag over the last few years. While it’s not entirely fair to pin it all on a political party, it’s sad to think about the implications of what our eroding rights will mean for future generations. And with the regression in the education systems, I wonder if teachers will be allowed to tell the kid to “step back from that ledge.” Some Republicans have made it clear that it’s better to be dead than gay, and they use the Bible as justification.
At this point, you probably know a little about the story of how a song from 1985 became a number 1 hit in 2022 thanks to being featured in a key scene in the Netflix series Stranger Things. When one of the biggest shows on Netflix returned in May after nearly a three-year hiatus, a key scene featured the opening track to Kate Bush‘s fifth record Hounds of Love, “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). The song never topped the charts during its original promotion, peaking at number 3 in the UK in 1985, and was even banned in some European countries for mentioning God in the song. Today, you’ll hear countless covers of the song and hear it in TikTok and Instagram videos constantly.
UNAWARE I’M TEARING YOU ASUNDER. Kate Bush is a name I should have been more aware of given how influential the singer-songwriter is on modern electronic dance music and modern pop. I think I first came across her name as influence when reading the music section of Attitudeseveral years ago. Many British and LGBTQ+ musicians cite Bush as an influence. Debuting in 1978 with her first record The Kick Insideand her number 1 British singles hit “Wuthering Heights,” Bush was the first female musician to top the chart with a song of which the singer held sole writing credits. The singer’s path to fame, though, started when the young singer-songwriter met Pink Floyd‘s guitarist David Gilmour through a mutual friend. Gilmour produced Bush’s demo tape that helped her sign her first record deal. The two musicians became friends and even performed together 11 years after her debut at The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987 (see video below). In 2002, Bush sang with Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” at London’s Royal Festival Hall. But Kate Bush throughout her career didn’t care much for performing and preferred recording and producing her own music, only playing her hits a few times. There was recently a video published speculating how much money Bush is making from the renewed popularity of today’s song “Running Up That Hill,” and with Bush being the only songwriter on the track, the money looks good. Not bad for a musician who dropped out of sixth-form.
LET’S EXCHANGE THE EXPERIENCE. Like my aversion to New Order when I first heard them, I had a little bit of a hard time with Kate Bush when I first heard “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). But my issue with this song (and Kate Bush for that matter) is different. When I first listened to New Order, it was the old synthesizers that made me feel awkward. The synthesizer on “Running Up That Hill” reminds me of that Yamaha keyboard in the garage that I talked about when I first talked about New Order. The synths on “Running Up That Hill” sound like something I would have played on the keyboard when I was 10, but that’s not my issue as I’ve learned to embrace that old sound. Kate Bush’s voice still needs to grow on my. I’ll admit it’s beautifully wispy, and on today’s song it so interestingly glides between the verse and the chorus. The transition between the verse and the chorus are so abrupt unlike anything I’ve ever heard before and if you close your eyes, you can almost picture Bush’s voice flying above the synth and bass, feet touching down for just a moment when her voice goes “Running up that” back up into the air for “hill.” I really want to fall in love with her other songs, but I think it’s going to take some ear adjustment. But that’s the fun thing about music: you don’t get it at once. It has to grow on you.
Music video:
Cover by Placebo:
Rick Beato talks about “Running Up That Hill”
Live Performance by Bush and David Gilmour (1987):
Mixtapemotions 