Running Up That Hill

Song written by Kate Bush. The song was reportedly written in one evening in the summer of 1983. It was the first song recorded for the subsequent fifth studio album Hounds Of Love . The electronic drums, programmed by Del Palmer , and the Fairlight part were present from the first recording of the song. The lyrics speak of Bush’s impossible wish to become her lover, and he her, so that they could know what the other felt. Kate played the first versions of the songs to Paul Hardiman on 6 October 1983. He commented later: “The first time I heard ‘Running Up That Hill’ it wasn’t a demo, it was a working start. We carried on working on Kate and Del’s original. Del had programmed the Linn drum part, the basis of which we kept. I know we spent time working on the Fairlight melody/hook but the idea was there plus guide vocals.” The track was worked on between 4 November and 6 December, with Stuart Elliott adding drums, but closely following the programmed pattern. Alan Murphy added guitar parts whereas Paddy Bush, always providing the most ingenious instruments, played the rather better known balalaika on this track. The working title of ‘Running Up That Hill’ was ‘A Deal With God’. Representatives at EMI were hesitant to release the single as ‘A Deal With God’ due its use of the word ‘God’, which might lead to a negative reception. Bush relented and changed the title for the single. On the album and subsequent releases the title was ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’. MTV chose not to show this video (at the time of its original release) and instead used a live performance of the song recorded at a promotional appearance on the BBC TV show Wogan . According to Paddy Bush, ‘MTV weren’t particularly interested in broadcasting videos that didn’t have synchronized lip movements in them. They liked the idea of people singing songs’. In 1987, Kate performed ‘Running Up That Hill’, singing live at Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Third Ball with Dave Gilmour on guitar. This version was also released on an album. In 2014, Kate performed ‘Running Up That Hill’ live during all the shows of Before The Dawn . Comfortably reaffirms her position as our very finest female singer, songwriter and performer. I don’t expect to hear many better singles this year. It is very much about the power of love, and the strength that is created between two people when they’re very much in love, but the strength can also be threatening, violent, dangerous as well as gentle, soothing, loving. And it’s saying that if these two people could swap places – if the man could become the woman and the woman the man, that perhaps they could understand the feelings of that other person in a truer way, understanding them from that gender’s point of view, and that perhaps there are very subtle differences between the sexes that can cause problems in a relationship, especially when people really do care about each other. (The Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985 ) ‘Running Up That Hill’ was one of the first songs that I wrote for the album. It was very nice for me that it was the first single released, I’d always hoped that would be the way. It’s very much about a relationship between a man and a woman who are deeply in love and they’re so concerned that things could go wrong – they have great insecurity, great fear of the relationship itself. It’s really saying if there’s a possibility of being able to swap places with each other that they’d understand how the other one felt, that when they were saying things that weren’t meant to hurt, that they weren’t meant sincerely, that they were just misunderstood. In some ways, I suppose the basic difference between men and women, where if we could swap places in a relationship, we’d understand each other better, but this, of course, is all theoretical anyway. (Open Interview, 1985) It seems that the more you get to know a person, the greater the scope there is for misunderstanding. Sometimes you can hurt som