English pop singer Kate Bush recently returned to the spotlight due to the inclusion of one of her hits, Running Up That Hill, on the soundtrack of the Netflix series
Stranger Things. The song, from 1985, made many people interested in Kate, a singer who is naturally reserved and rarely gives interviews.
If you are among the new (or old) Kate Bush fans, this text is for you. In it, we share 5 facts about this incredible artist.
1. She had the same dance teacher as David Bowie
(Source: Kate Bush News)
David Bowie exerted a strong influence on Kate Bush’s work. In addition to this admiration, they had something in common: they both received lessons from dancer, mime and choreographer Lindsay Kemp.
Kemp grew up in Liverpool and South Shields, England, and studied with the famous mime Marcel Marceau. Bowie saw him perform when he was 19, and soon they would become working partners. Kemp collaborated in the creation of Ziggy Stardust, probably Bowie’s most famous character.
Kate Bush took classes with Lindsay Kemp in order to become more resourceful and less shy in presentations. On her first album, she dedicated the first track, Moving, to the choreographer.
2. She made very unusual partnerships
Kate Bush hasn’t done many collaborations with other artists throughout her career. But the ones she did were, to say the least, curious. She sang with Peter Gabriel, former lead singer of the band Genesis, but also did some comedy partnerships. She recorded a track called Do Bear… with Roman Atkinson — himself, the famous Mr. Bean. One of the song’s verbs read: “He’s a complete idiot and he leaves me in the bend. To alleviate the boredom, I sleep with his friends”.
Another collaboration of Kate was with the actor. Stephen Fry, most famous of the new generations for his role in Harry Potter. They sang together the song 50 Words for Snow, in which both recite the word “snow” in several languages.
3 . The hit Wuthering Heights was inspired by the TV series, not the book
)
Kate Bush’s first big hit was the ballad Wuthering Heights, whose name refers to the famous book
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, from 1847. She composed the song in 1977 and released it in 1978, becoming an absolute success.
A lot of people think Kate wrote the song after reading the book. In fact, she had only watched the series created by the BBC in 1967, which adapted the work. The singer only went to read the novel after the song had already been released.
4. A music video of her was banned in England
Kate Bush is a great lover of horror cinema. So when she released the album The Whole Story in 1986, she prepared a music video for the track Experiment IV, whose theme was very aggressive: the song talks about a military plot that was making a destructive sound capable of killing.
In the clip, several British TV stars appear, such as Hugh Laurie, Dawn French and Peter Vaughn, who suffer violent deaths. As a result, the video was banned from the popular BBC show Top of the Pops.
5. She ushered in the head mics
Headphones with microphone are fundamental to music today . We usually associate their emergence with stars like Madonna, in the 90s, and Britney Spears, in the 2000s.
But know that Kate Bush was the first famous artist to wear this accessory, in his tour The Tour of Life, which mixed dance, poetry, music and even a little magic. In order to achieve such versatility on stage, the tour’s sound engineer, Martin Fisher, created a microphone that was attached to Kate’s head, giving rise to a technology that would become very important years later.
