Kate Bush

Yet another RUTH cover (by Kim Petras):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3WQ7RxIiII

I like it because it's kind of my thing but really it's just the original with maybe a louder beat and fuller vocals.

I posted a list of favorite songs here recently and I think calstars replied “do you live in vice city?”

― brimstead

It always felt a little weird to me when I hear people who are my age (mid-30s) who say "Oh I was introduced to that song through Vice City", with even the most popular of 80s songs.

that makes sense, I'm mid-30s too and don't really remember those tracks at the time. the first new song I remember hearing on the radio was probably "U Can't Touch This". by the time I became aware of this stuff they were oldies

Oh wow now I really want a Placebo cover of Tarzan Boy.

True, I'm just thinking there's a lot of stuff that to me feels like standard radio/vh1/grocery store fodder that it surprises me that it took Grand Theft Auto to discover the song. Then again I might be in the rare group of people that takes notice to what is playing in a grocery store.

Aren't ppl often the most clueless about stuff that came out in the decade they were born (with exceptions, of course)? I was born in the '70s, and knew almost nothing about '70s music/culture growing up... there were big, mainstream aspects of it that I was only introduced to via Pulp Fiction, or whatever.

(for context - I originally heard that "decade you were born" theory expressed by a coworker who was born in the '80s, and didn't know much about '80s stuff... and it rang true to me)

I knew a lot of that stuff because I watched VH1 & sometimes listened to "classic rock" radio. feel like most people did neither. definitely had some "what is that playing in the grocery store" moments but it was always hard to figure out!! very difficult to make out lyrics over the loudspeaker sometimes.

doesn't really hold up if you were born in the first few years of the decade lol

signed, 1990 baby

well, sure

yep, `81 here and have lots of (admittedly mostly late) 80s pop culture memories.

I was born in 1979 and obv don't have firsthand memories of the 70s but I certainly knew more about 70s music and culture growing up than about 40s or 50s music and culture or tbh even early 80s stuff. A lot of 70s stuff already seemed canonical when I was young.

one of the first 80's songs I remember was "Roam" by the B-52s. I remember hearing it in 2nd grade and thinking it was something from the past. this would be like my 7 year old thinking "Despacito" was an oldie

xxp I guess you could technically make it a five-year cushion after your birth or something (i.e., before you start paying attn to pop culture).

If even a small subset of these Stranger Things Kate Bush fans discover The Dreaming and Kick Inside and understand what a timeless gem she is, all the better.

BTW the Kate Bush ballot poll is one of my all time favorite threads here - the passion and exuberance expressed is peak ILM (in a good way)

As is the thread anticipating Aerial. So much joy!

mmm yes

I made a playlist of 192 covers of "Running Up That Hill"...

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0YKKJNEkFYeKdfkueMomgG

I just want to know what Big Boi think about all of this.

xxp I guess you could technically make it a five-year cushion after your birth or something (i.e., before you start paying attn to pop culture).

Oh, that makes more sense, yeah.

I was born in 1979... A lot of 70s stuff already seemed canonical when I was young.

This dynamic probably changes, depending on the year you were born and the demographics surrounding it. Boomer culture was predominant well into the adulthood of many Gen Xers.

i was born in '76 and grew up surrounded by, immersed in, and related _most_ to "classic rock" of the '60s and '70s. to this day i'm _much_ more familiar with the music of the 1970s than i am with the music of any other decade, though '70s music long ago stopped meaning "classic rock" to me.

I admit to a certain degree it also depends on the vagaries of personal upbringing. My parents were still living a hippie lifestyle until the early ‘80s, so they weren’t exposed to ‘70s culture either (and it certainly didn’t filter down to me).

I remember seeing a kid wearing a Saturday Night Fever T-shirt at summer camp, sometime in the mid-‘80s, and thinking: “What is that, is it like Saturday Night Live? “

But I def had the sense that the 70s were not at all cool in the 80s, like the whole thing about pegging/rolling our jeans in middle school… to avoid even a hint of “bell bottoms.”

Tying this back to Kate Bush, I think Marcello Carlin suggested that she was effectively the last "pre-punk" UK artist, and that one reason she was able to get away with breaking the music press "rules of punk" was being a young woman. She was raised on her older brothers' 60s records and middle-class hippie culture.

from her FB page:

Kate has entered the Official UK Charts at NUMBER 8, announced just now on BBC Radio 1! This means (as far as we can gather!) that Kate is the first female artist to have had Top 12 UK hit singles in 6 consecutive decades; the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s! (And for those that might ask “hey, okay we know about King of the Mountain hitting number 4 in 2005 but what hit single did she have in the 2010s? The answer is her 2012 remix / new vocal of Running Up That Hill from the closing ceremony of the London Olympics which reached number 6. We say “top 12” and not top 10 for this record, because in the 1990s her highest UK singles chart position was 12, with Rubberband Girl in 1993). This is Kate’s 7th Top Ten single overall in the UK, or 8th if you also count her duet with Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up in 1986. Amazing - congratulations
, Kate!

wasn't quite one at the time so I can't recall but were there any hits from the late 40s that popped up again all of a sudden in 1985?

Kate speaks:

https://www.katebush.com/news/stranger-things

wasn't quite one at the time so I can't recall but were there any hits from the late 40s that popped up again all of a sudden in 1985?

'That Ole Devil Called Love' (written in 1944), got to number 2 in the UK in 1985

Sung by Alison Moyet of Yazoo / Yaz fame btw

"Shaving Cream," an actual recording from 1946 suddenly popped up as a US hit single in 1975. Not sure how well known it was in 1946.

There's also "Unforgettable" from 51 that charted in 91 when sung by Natalie Cole with the original recording of her father.

There were some swing songs like "In The Mood" and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" that became popular again (albeit not on the charts) through commercials and films.

...and of course there was the standards craze with Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Barry Manilow, Dr. John and others Songbook albums.

Am I missing something, or was Taco's "Puttin' On The Ritz" a hit in basically every corner of the world except for the UK?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puttin%27_On_the_Ritz#Chart_history

(*well, most corners of the world)

omg yikes at the blackface in the video!

There were some swing songs like "In The Mood" and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" that became popular again (albeit not on the charts) through commercials and films.

The follow-up project to Stars on 45 arrived in 1983: The Star Sisters, who were channeling The Andrew Sisters instead of The Beatles.
They were wildly successful in the Netherlands and Belgium and mildly so in other parts of Europe. In the US their catchily titled medley “Stars on 45 proudly presents The Star Sisters” only reached bubbling under status (Wikipedia has its peak at #107):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5AtZIc3KOE

This still an excellent remix of RUTH, has the typical prog house wooziness of the early 2000s but holds up well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRoQ2aLE4MY

'That Ole Devil Called Love' (written in 1944), got to number 2 in the UK in 1985

Sung by Alison Moyet of Yazoo / Yaz fame btw

She also got to #4 with 'Love Letters' (written in 1945) in 1987.

And yet I think the point still stands that from a musical perspective, the 1940s felt horribly distant in the 1908s, in a way that the 1980s don't so much in the 2020s. The 1980s and the 2020s share a musical language much more so than the 1980s and the 1940s.

It’s the technology, isn’t it? That’s flippant but once the beats hit harder I have to wonder…

There was all that Matt Bianco / Carmel crap too, which certainly tapped into some kind of fictitious past-times era.

The 1980s and the 2020s share a musical language much more so than the 1980s and the 1940s.

Invention of rock'n'roll is the difference here, there hasn't been a comparable cultural upheaval since.

hip-hop?

hip-hop from the 80s sounds about as distant from the 80s as culture club is from glenn miller

*distant from today’s hip hop

Also house / techno made a major shift in the mid 90’s compared to the pioneering sounds of the late 80’s (Mr. Fingers, Virgo, KLF, MARRS, 808 state, model 500…)