Kate Bush

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…)

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

I don't think it's flippant. Advances in sound recording and engineering between 1942 and 1982 were surely more substantial than between 1982 and 2022. So when songs from the 30s or 40s were revived, it was usually via new recordings.

Are we on the "slow cancellation of the future" again?

I do think the backbeat and more modal harmonic language that came in with rock make some difference too.

Hip-hop has absolutely been seismic — it's changed everything. Listen to jazz with a drummer under 40 vs a drummer over 40. I hate to get all Stanley Crouch, but swing is completely different now; young drummers think in loops. So even when they swing, there's a locked-in-ness.

I do think the backbeat and more modal harmonic language that came in with rock make some difference too.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Monday, June 6, 2022 10:15 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm out of my depth on stuff like this - I've heard of modal harmony in jazz, but never heard it associated with rock. Can you elaborate?

I assume sund4r means simpler, blues-derived melodies and chord progressions taking the place of the more elaborate harmonies of pre-rock popular music in the 50s. Then in the 60s, you had rock that was inspired by modal jazz and non-Western music that was built around drones rather than chord changes.

Sure, I was using it a bit loosely but in this context I mean music that is mostly based on diatonic scales/modes and has a tonal centre but doesn't follow classical/functional rules of harmonic progression (which most Tin Pan Alley/Jazz Age-era pop music does), where predominant progresses to dominant to tonic with an authentic cadence etc. Most rock is still built around chord progressions, or at the least patterns, and is different from pre-Baroque modal music that way, but the progressions don't always make sense from a functional harmony pov, are commonly quite simple, and the modal direction of the melodic line often gives the best clue as to the tonality. Both blues and folk influences make a difference here. There are a bunch of examples listed on pp. 4-5 here: https://www.academia.edu/1826046/Modal_Function_in_Rock_and_Heavy_Metal_Music . You could also look at "Sweet Home Alabama", say, as an example - the melody makes clear that there is a centre on D but it uses the Mixolydian mode and the repeated chord progression D-C-G (with a D pedal) is non-functional.

xp yep

Or tying it back to the topic, "Running Up That Hill" has a melody based entirely on the Aeolian mode (C natural minor), with non-functional progressions built from that mode like i-v-VI-VII and VI-VII-i, where e.g. "Autumn Leaves" from 1945 also draws on the harmonic and melodic minor scales and the chord progressions follow the logic of classical functional harmony (mostly built around ii-V-i [predominant-dominant-tonic] progressions).

All very broad; ofc there are still functional-harmonic songs now and there were blues-based or modal tunes bitd.

Using this site, you can see comparable Aeolian progressions to Bush's in more recent songs like "Swan Song" by Dua Lipa and "Symphony" by Clean Bandit or "I Want You to Know" by Zedd feat. Selena Gomez. https://www.hooktheory.com

it was only 22 years, but “Twist and Shout” was a top ten for the Beatles in 64 and 86, latter due to its appearance in Ferris Bueller.

Advances in sound recording and engineering between 1942 and 1982 were surely more substantial than between 1982 and 2022.

No question. Also, people bought CDs in 1982 and they’re still around in 2022 (CDs, I mean. But I suspect some people from 1982 are also still around). There was no format that existed in 1942 that you could still buy new in 1982 (unless sheet music counts).

And...here we are.

https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/harry-styles-kate-bush-hot-100-top-10-1235082217/

we finally cancelled netflix, got tired of transphobic bs, which meant not watching the new season of stranger things, and finally started watching Pose - and what a perfect symmetric irony the universe provided with RUTH coming up in the very first episode

Hope it dethrones that Harry Styles song. It’s super bland.

Not gonna happen, but I'm glad my students hug both.

I’ve added it to a playlist that’s only that song 200 times on loop while I’m sleeping to help crunch the numbers.

Wait, so it's gone top 10? Does that mean it's being played on the radio?

sorry

hank hill sings running up that hill (a deal with god) pic.twitter.com/EkEGnnZfJ5

— joe joegan (@jakebrodes) June 7, 2022

Well the guitar approach is pretty

I wonder how many people hearing this song for the first time are checking out the album, or any of her albums? I get the impression (largely anecdotal) that young(er than me) folks are just not into albums. That is, they might be fans of "Don't Stop Believin'" and say they love Journey, but don't listen to any other songs by Journey. They love "Bohemian Rhapsody" and profess their love of Queen, but they don't listen to any other songs by them. They might love "Running Up That Hill," but they won't check out "Hounds of Love" or anything else by Kate Bush. It's very single minded (pun intended?). Like, this song was in a commercial, or Tik Tok, or viral video, or movie, or TV show, but there's no real concept of or interest in its place in a larger artistic/creative context. It's just a one-off.

I remember some years back, a couple, I suggested to one of my kids that they might like the first Weezer record. She eventually relented and put it on ... but she didn't start with the first song. I told her, you know, sometimes albums are sequenced as such, and the artists pick the first song for a reason, why wouldn't you just start from the beginning? And she just kind of shrugged. There are a handful of acts my kids love where they listen to everything that act does, but most music they listen to is on a song by song basis. I guess that's how it used to be. Maybe more artists should just go back to releasing stand-alone singles.

About 10 years ago or more, a much younger cousin of mine took a bunch of the CDs I brought for her, ripped them into itunes and then DELETED the album names...