Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill (1985)

"Running Up That Hill" is a song by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush. It was the first single from her 1985 album ...

"Running Up That Hill" is a song by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush. It was the first single from her 1985 album Hounds of Love, released in the United Kingdom on 5 August 1985. It was her first 12-inch single. It was the most successful of Bush's 1980s releases, entering the UK chart at number 9 and eventually peaking at number 3, her second-highest single peak. The single also had an impact in the United States, providing Bush with her first chart hit there since 1978, where it reached the top 30 and featured prominently in the Dance Charts. Bush also performed the song live for the first time with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd at the Secret Policeman's Third Ball in 1987. The song's title for Hounds of Love and all subsequent releases was "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)".

The B-side of the 7-inch single contains Bush's song "Under the Ivy". The 12-inch single contains an extended remix and an instrumental version of "Running Up That Hill", as well as "Under the Ivy". A limited 7-inch single gatefold sleeve edition was also released.

The song has been critically acclaimed. In a retrospective review of the single, AllMusic journalist Amy Hanson wrote: "Always adept at emotion and beautifully able to manipulate even the most bitter of hearts, rarely has Bush penned such a brutally truthful, painfully sensual song."

The song was featured as the main theme tune for the 1986 BBC 1 children's drama serial Running Scared.

Music video

The music video featured Bush performing an interpretive dance with dancer Michael Hervieu. The video was directed by David Garfath while the dance routines were choreographed by Diane Grey. Bush and Hervieu are shown wearing grey Japanese hakamas. Bush wanted the dancing in "Running Up That Hill" to be more of a classical performance. She stated that dance in music videos was "being used quite trivially, it was being exploited: haphazard images, busy, lots of dances, without really the serious expression, and wonderful expression, that dance can give. So we felt how interesting it would be to make a very simple routine between two people, almost classic, and very simply filmed. So that's what we tried, really, to do a serious piece of dance."

The choreography draws upon contemporary dance with a repeated gesture suggestive of drawing a bow and arrow (the gesture was made literal on the cover for the single in which Bush poses with a real bow and arrow), intercut with surreal sequences of Bush and Hervieu searching through crowds of masked strangers. At the climax of the song, Bush's partner withdraws from her and the two are then swept away from each other and down a long hall in opposite directions by an endless stream of anonymous figures wearing masks made from pictures of Bush and Hervieu's faces. MTV chose not to show this video (at the time of its original release) and instead used a playback "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