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When Kate Bush unleashed “Wuthering Heights” on the world in 1978 the public didn’t know quite what to make it of it. But they knew they liked it. One of the most daring, original singles ever – and a debut

Kate Bush Song facts

Composer
Kate Bush

Genre
Pop

Album
The Kick Inside

Year of release
1978

UK Chart Position
1 single at that – “Wuthering Heights” was an instant success, staying at number one for a month.

Kate was a precocious child and wrote her first song aged 13. When a family friend played her demo tape to Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour he helped her win a deal with EMI. The label paid for her to learn dance, mime, songwrite and other useful skills in preparation for her debut album, The Kick Inside. The move paid off. By the time she came to record it she’d written some 30 tracks, of which “Wuthering Heights” was one.
Her melodramatic adaptation of Emily Bronte’s tale of doomed love on the windswept moors is like nothing before and very little since. In fact it’s pretty much timeless. Pushing her already operatic voice to the limits, she sounds something like an alien child as she sings: “Heathcliff, it’s meee, Cath-eeey, come home now” over a swirling backing of piano and strings.
But slightly overblown or not, it remains a truly great song.

Kate Bush on fame at an early age

Kate Bush

Kate kept herself busy while waiting for the album to be recorded but, with a UK Number One on her hands, it was suddenly non-stop working. "I put up with 16 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.'."
 
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Pat Benatar

  Arena rocker Pat Benatar covered Wuthering Heights on her 1980s album 'Crimes of Passion'. A surprising choice for what became one of her most aggressively rockin' outings of her career.

I always remember that diminutive elf whirling about on Top Of The Pops

Sarah - Glasgow
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