Kate Bush had a big year, huh! “Running Up That Hill,” a song that came out in 1985, made it up to No. 3 on the Billboard “Hot 100” 37 years later thanks to season four of Stranger Things. Everybody say, “Thank you, Duffer brothers!” On December 22, Bush released her annual year-end Christmas note on her website, noting the craziness of the past year both in the good way (surprise at being introduced to a new generation) and the bad way (the state of the world). “It’s been a crazy, roller coaster year for me,” Bush wrote. “I still reel from the success of RUTH, being the No 1 track of this summer. What an honour! It was really exciting to see it doing so well globally, but especially here in the UK and Australia; and also to see it making it all the way to No 3 in the US. It was such a great feeling to see so many of the younger generation enjoying the song. It seems that quite a lot of them thought I was a new artist! I love that!”
Despite the personal successes, Bush has her focus attuned to the state of the rest of the world. “I don’t think any of us have ever known a year like this one,” she wrote. “Life became incredibly frightening in the pandemic, but just as we think it might be over soon, it seems to keep going. It’s a bombardment - the horrific war in Ukraine, the famines, the droughts, the floods… and we lost our Queen. Many of my friends were surprised at how upset they were at her death especially as we aren’t royalists, but I think her passing became a focus for grief, for unexpressed loss that so many people had felt during the pandemic.”
In a moment of hope, Bush also looked toward the future. “I wonder where on earth we’ll all be at the end of next year?” she said. “I hope the war will end. I hope that the nurses will be in a position where they are appreciated - they should be cherished. Let’s all hope that next year will be better than this one. I keep thinking about hope and how it was the last to fly out of Pandora’s box. Sometimes it’s all that seems to glow in the dark times we find ourselves in right now.” At this point, the best thing we could hope for is another viral Kate Bush song. Gen Z would really get into some “Babooshka.”
