"Wuthering Heights" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Kate Bush | ||||
from the album The Kick Inside | ||||
B-side | "Kite" | |||
Written | 5 March 1977 | |||
Released | 20 January 1978 | |||
Recorded | 1977 | |||
Studio | AIR (London) | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 4:29 | |||
Label | EMI | |||
Songwriter(s) | Kate Bush | |||
Producer(s) | Andrew Powell | |||
Kate Bush singles chronology | ||||
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Music video | ||||
"Wuthering Heights" on YouTube | ||||
Audio sample | ||||
"Wuthering Heights" (1977) |
"Wuthering Heights" is the debut single by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush,released on 20 January 1978 through EMI Records. It was released as the lead single from Bush's debut album, The Kick Inside (1978). It uses unusual harmonic progressions and irregular phrase lengths,with lyrics inspired by the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Bush wrote it in a single evening at the age of 18.
"Wuthering Heights" remained at number one on the UK singles chart for four weeks,making Bush the first female artist to achieve a number-one single with an entirely self-written song. [2] It also reached the top of the charts in Australia,Ireland,Italy,New Zealand,and Portugal.
In 2016, Pitchfork named "Wuthering Heights" the fifth-greatest song of the 1970s. [3] In 2020, The Guardian ranked it as the 14th-best UK number-one single. [4] It is certified platinum in the UK for sales and streams of over 600,000 units. A remix featuring rerecorded vocals was included on Bush's first compilation album, The Whole Story (1986),and included as the B-side to her 1986 single "Experiment IV".
Bush wrote "Wuthering Heights" aged 18,in a few hours late at night on 5 March 1977. [5] She was inspired after seeing the 1967 BBC adaptation of the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights . [6] She subsequently read the novel and discovered that she shared her birthday with its author,Emily Brontë. [7]
"Wuthering Heights" is sung from the perspective of the Wuthering Heights character Catherine Earnshaw,a ghost pleading at Heathcliff's window to be allowed in. It quotes Catherine's dialogue,including the lyrics "I'm so cold","let me in",and "bad dreams in the night". The critic Simon Reynolds described it as "Gothic romance distilled into four-and-a-half minutes of gaseous rhapsody". [8] The music and lyrics establish a duality between the real world and the afterlife. The real world is associated with the past tense and a tonic of A major,whereas Cathy's afterlife is associated with the present tense and a tonic of D♭major. The song also uses unusual harmonic progressions and irregular phrase lengths. [9]
Bush recorded her vocal in a single take. [10] Her performance uses manipulations in soft palate to produce changes in vocal timbre,a technique popular among Indian playback singers and in Peking opera. [9] The guitar solo is played by Ian Bairnson,who said that he initially disliked the tone for many years for "purely guitarist reasons". [11] Bairnson played the solo with a broken arm. [12] The engineer,Jon Kelly,said he regretted not placing the solo louder in the mix. [13] The production team,with Bush,began mixing at midnight and stayed until "five or six in the morning". [10]
Bush's record company,EMI,originally chose another track,"James and the Cold Gun",as the lead single,but Bush was determined to use "Wuthering Heights". [14] The single was initially scheduled for 4 November 1977;however,Bush was unhappy with the cover and insisted it be replaced. Some copies of the single had already been sent out to radio stations,but EMI relented and put back the single's launch until 20 January 1978. [15] [16]
The single cover artwork mirrored that used for the album cover;both featured a photograph of Bush "clinging to a large painted dragon kite,gliding across a vast,all-seeing eye",taken by Jay Myrdal. [15]
"Wuthering Heights" entered the charts in the week ending 11 February 1978 at No. 42. [17] [18] The following week it rose to No. 27,and Bush made her first appearance on Top of the Pops . The song was added to BBC Radio 1's playlist the following week and became one of the most-played records on radio. [19] In 1986,the first pressings of her first compilation album The Whole Story erroneously stated the release date for this single as 4 November 1977. [20]
Two music videos with similar choreography were created to accompany "Wuthering Heights". Bush created the choreography and dance moves to suggest her character is a ghost (as in this scene in the novel),without explicitly stating as much. [21] In the first version,known as the indoor version,made for the UK and European release,Bush is shown performing the song in a dark room filled with white mist while wearing a white dress. [22] Critics have described this video as a milestone in the history of music videos before the MTV era,with Pitchfork putting it on number three on the list of greatest music videos from the 70s. [23]
In the outside version,Bush is shown dancing—'out in the wily,windy moors'—in a grassy area located on Salisbury Plain (inspired by the novel's moors) with Scots pine trees in the background,on an overcast day,while wearing a flowy red dress. [24] The exact location is called "Baden's Clump" near Sidbury Hill,close to the town of Tidworth in Wiltshire. [25] This video was filmed on the morning of 26 October 1977. The red dress has been referenced numerous times in popular culture [26] and similar dresses have been worn by her fans at events such as "The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever" where her dance routine is recreated. [27] [28]
"It was suddenly non-stop working. I put up with sixteen months of that and then I said: look, I've just got to stop or I'm not going to be able to write any songs any more."
—Bush reflecting on "Wuthering Heights" instant success. [29]
After being delayed for two months, "Wuthering Heights" was officially released in early 1978 and entered the top forty in the official singles chart in the United Kingdom at number twenty-seven on 18 February. [30] It rose to number one three weeks later dethroning ABBA's "Take a Chance on Me" from the top spot. [31] Bush became the first female artist to have an entirely self-written number one in the UK. [32] The single release unwittingly pitted Bush against another female vocalist also charting with her first UK hit: Debbie Harry with her band Blondie and their single "Denis", which stalled at number two. [33] [34] "Wuthering Heights" remained at number one for a month until it was replaced at the top by Brian and Michael's celebration of the then-recently deceased artist L. S. Lowry, "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs". [35] Bush's début single finished the year as the tenth highest-selling and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry, denoting sales of over half a million. [36] [37]
"Wuthering Heights" also hit number one in Ireland, [38] in Italy, [39] in New Zealand, where it spent five weeks at number one and achieved platinum status, [40] and in Australia, where it stayed at the top of the charts for three consecutive weeks and achieved gold status. [41] [40] It proved to be one of the biggest hits of 1978 in Denmark. [42] It reached the top ten in Spain, [43] Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as the top twenty in Austria and West Germany. [44] Bush had performed the song on the first episode of the West German music talk show Bio's Bahnhof on 9 February 1978. [45]
Following the live performance of the song by Laura Bunting on The Voice in Australia, "Wuthering Heights" re-entered the country's top 40 in 2012, 34 years after its original release in 1978. [46]
Written when Bush was 18 years old, this eerie gothic tale of lost love and longing cemented her individuality from the very beginning. She appeared on Top of the Pops with it five times in 1978, cementing her public image as an ethereal spirit, embodying the essence of Cathy through a combination of wide eyes, floaty fabrics and wild choreography, still fondly mimicked and parodied today.
—Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian on the impact of the song. [7]
A remixed version, featuring rerecorded vocals, was included on the 1986 greatest hits album The Whole Story. [10] This version also appeared as the B-side to her 1986 hit "Experiment IV". [47]
In 2018, as part of the Bradford Literature Festival, it was announced that Bush had been invited to write an epitaph to Emily Brontë, which would be inscribed on one of four stones erected near the Brontë's home in Haworth, West Yorkshire. [48] Commenting on the unveiling of her poem, entitled Emily, Bush said "to be asked to write a piece for Emily's stone is an honour and, in a way, a chance to say thank you to her". [49]
A flashmob event known as the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever was officially created in 2016 and is held annually. Fans gather in locations around the world to recreate the "red dress" video. [21] [50] [51] [52] Upon seeing a video clip of the event, Bush said that she found it "very touching and sweet". [53]
The song has been interpreted by comedians Steve Coogan and Noel Fielding, on two occasions, as part of the BBC fundraising telethon Comic Relief . [21] Coogan sang the song in the 1999 show as part of a medley of other Bush material in character as Alan Partridge. [21] Fielding performed to the song in the 2011 series of Let's Dance for Comic Relief , placing in the final of the competition. [54] [55]
Credits sourced from Sound On Sound [13]
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
|
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Australia (ARIA) [40] | Gold | 50,000^ |
Brazil (Pro-Música Brasil) [79] | Gold | 150,000 [79] |
Denmark (IFPI Danmark) [80] | Gold | 45,000‡ |
France | — | 200,000 [81] |
Germany | — | 100,000 [82] |
Italy | — | 300,000 [83] |
Netherlands (NVPI) [84] | Gold | 40,000 [84] |
New Zealand (RMNZ) [85] | Platinum | 20,000* |
United Kingdom (BPI) [86] Physical | Gold | 500,000^ |
United Kingdom (BPI) [87] Digital | Platinum | 600,000‡ |
Summaries | ||
Worldwide 1978 sales | — | 1,000,000 [88] |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. |
Catherine Bush is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and dancer. Bush began writing songs at age 11. She was signed to EMI Records after the Pink Floyd guitarist, David Gilmour, helped produce a demo tape. In 1978, at the age of 19, she topped the UK singles chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights", becoming the first female artist to achieve a UK number one with a self-written song. Her debut album, The Kick Inside, was released that year.
Hounds of Love is the fifth studio album by English musician Kate Bush, released on 16 September 1985 by EMI Records. It was a commercial success and marked a return to the public eye for Bush after the relatively low sales of her previous album, 1982's The Dreaming. The album's lead single, "Running Up That Hill ", became one of Bush's biggest hits, giving Bush her second UK number-one single in June 2022. The album's first side produced three further singles, "Cloudbusting", "Hounds of Love", and "The Big Sky". The second side, subtitled The Ninth Wave, forms a conceptual suite about a woman drifting alone in the sea at night.
The Kick Inside is the debut studio album by English singer-songwriter Kate Bush. Released on 17 February 1978 by EMI Records, it includes her UK No. 1 hit, "Wuthering Heights". The album peaked at No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart and has been certified Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Several progressive rock musicians were involved in the album including Duncan Mackay, Ian Bairnson, David Paton, Andrew Powell, and Stuart Elliott of the Alan Parsons Project and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.
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Pilot is a Scottish rock group, formed in 1973 in Edinburgh by David Paton and Billy Lyall. They are best known for their songs "January", "Magic", "Just a Smile" and "Call Me Round".
John "Ian" Bairnson was a Scottish musician and member of Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project. He was a multi-instrumentalist, who played saxophone and keyboards, but mainly performed as a guitarist, which he played with a sixpence. In addition to his work with Parsons, Bairnson played guitar on four Kate Bush albums, including the guitar solo on her 1978 debut single, "Wuthering Heights".
"Denise" is a song written by Neil Levenson that was inspired by his childhood friend, Denise Lefrak. In 1963, it became a popular top ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, when recorded by the American doo-wop group Randy & the Rainbows. A cover version by the American new wave group Blondie, re-titled "Denis", reached number 2 in the UK Singles Chart in 1978. Dutch actress and singer Georgina Verbaan covered "Denis" in 2002 and reached number 30 on the Dutch Singles Chart.
"Running Up That Hill" (on some releases titled "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)") is a song by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush. It was released in the UK as the lead single from Bush's fifth studio album, Hounds of Love, on 5 August 1985 by EMI Records.
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"Moving" is a song written and recorded by English singer-songwriter Kate Bush for her debut album, The Kick Inside (1978). It was released as a single only in Japan in April 1978 by EMI Music Japan. Written by Bush and produced by Andrew Powell, the song is a tribute to Lindsay Kemp, her mime teacher. "Moving" opens with whale song sampled from Songs of the Humpback Whale, an LP including recordings of whale vocalisations made by Dr. Roger S. Payne.
"Hammer Horror" is a song by Kate Bush, released as the first single from her second album Lionheart. It was released on 3 November 1978. The song peaked at No. 44 on the UK Singles Chart. The parent album, released on 10 November 1978 reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart. "Hammer Horror"'s low chart position proved to be a temporary phenomenon, as Bush's next single returned her to the top 20. In other countries it fared better, including in Ireland and Australia, where the song reached No. 10 and No.17 respectively.
Wuthering Heights is Bernard J. Taylor's musical/operatic version of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. The musical first appeared in 1992 as a studio recording featuring Lesley Garrett as Cathy, Dave Willetts as Heathcliff, Bonnie Langford as Isabella Linton and other stars of Britain's West End stage. The show has since been translated into six languages from the original English and has been extensively staged in the UK, USA, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Romania, Australia and New Zealand. In 2008 a production was being planned in Budapest, Hungary, where Taylor's Much Ado received its European continental premiere in 2007. Lesley Garrett has included her recording of 'I Belong To The Earth' on two of her solo albums.
... Inglesa Kate Bush conseguiu um disco de ouro no Brasil, por 150 mil compactos vendidos
In Nederland zijn beide platen zo goed verkocht dat er goud mee verdiend werd. Van de elpee gingen meer dan 60.000 exemplaren over de toonbank, terwijl de single boven de 40.000 exemplaren kwam.
Sales of the single reached 500,000 in six weeks, and the final global tally was a million