Rating: 4/5 stars

Kate Bush (“50 Words for Snow”) does not deserve the fluke revival treatment. 

Since “Stranger Things” featured her synth-pop classic “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” the music industry has re-encountered Bush’s name as a fad among Gen-Z obsessed with the stereotypically ‘80s-ness of that song. The song’s return to the charts looked similar to the return of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac (“The Dance”). Bush, however, is positioned uniquely as an artist who never made it to the mainstream on American radio in the first place. In the summer of 2022, the reclusive Bush was everywhere. 

A year since the phenomenon and over a decade since her last release, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) inducted Bush into their superficial canon of musical fame masquerading as a cultural institution. Bush, keeping with her dedicated private life and more or less retirement from music, did not attend the ceremony on Nov. 3. Instead, indie pop star St. Vincent (“Daddy’s Home”), whose real name is Annie Clark, performed “Running Up That Hill” in Bush’s place. 

Clark has mentioned Bush as an influence; Clark’s artful and experimental pop sensibility testifies to this fact. However, Clark’s cover of Bush’s resurgent hit sounded more like a replacement for Bush rather than an homage. The backing band reproduced Bush’s Fairlight CMI synthesizer and gated drums like a carbon copy. As expressive as Clark’s vocals usually are on her solo work, she could not capture Bush’s signature operatic range. Clark’s attempt resulted in an awkward monotone.

Above the stage at Barclays Center, an image of Bush, an outtake from her iconic “Hounds of Love” album cover, appeared above Clark and the band. Bush’s face looked above and away from the ceremony in a disposition one could optimistically interpret as wonder and pessimistically as disgust. To the left of them an LED wall malfunctioned. Clark wore a dress bordering avant-garde, if “avant-garde” meant the ostrich version of the 2001 Oscars swan dress. The awkward moment demonstrated the unspoken secret among the music industry: most of the marketing professionals milking Bush’s name off the “Stranger Things” trend had absolutely no clue who Bush was.

Clark’s performance was not the worst attempt at covering the song. Rita Ora (“I’ll Be There”) performed a cringy attempt at aimlessly modernizing Bush’s song for Rock in Rio 2022. Halsey (“Die 4 Me”) covered the song at the 2022 Governor’s Ball with well intentions but unnecessary whispery, audibly cursive singing. Very soon after the song’s re-entry onto the charts, Kim Petras (“Problématique”) hopped on the trend to release what sounds like if ChatGPT spit out the most soulless, roughly autotuned rendition of the song possible. 

Rapper Big Boi (“Big Sleepover”), whose real name is Antwan Patton, sponsored Bush’s induction, saying in his speech that he listened to “Running Up That Hill” every morning as a kid. Like with Clark, Patton should not be mistaken as yet another celebrity riding off Bush’s name to appeal to pseudo-nostalgic teenagers. Patton has long been a fun-fact within the Bush fandom as an unexpected superfan. Patton even name-dropped “The Dreaming” and “50 Words for Snow,” Bush albums that, despite the popularity of her big hit, have not received any resurgence by proxy. 

“I know what some of you are thinking,” Patton said. “What does Kate Bush have to do with hip-hop? She is such a unique artist, you might as well also ask, ‘What does Kate Bush have to do with rock ‘n’ roll?’”

Patton’s question reflects the evolution of the RRHOF from a marketing tool to promote rock artists to a marketing tool to promote artists of all genres. Bush’s induction may seem long overdue for those who trust on the RRHOF as a rite of passage for musical legends. The RRHOF has only recently worked to compensate for its suspicious gender inequality–only about 22% of its inductees are women, as of the last induction–but Bush’s induction resonated not as a moment waiting to happen but a moment the organizers felt obligated to prepare. Bush does not need the RRHOF just as she does not need a Grammy. 

Bush’s induction ceremony will probably mark the end of a phenomenon collecting the cultural influence of ‘80s nostalgia, TikTok campaigns on behalf of Gen-Z and extensive promotional marketing outside of Bush’s direction. While Bush has always been a musical icon in her native U.K., where she performs in residencies instead of touring concerts, for the longest time her fame in America was as an eclectic foreign import, the likes of Björk (“Fossora”) and Florence Welch (“Dance Fever”). 

The “Stranger Things” tie-in was not completely anachronistic, as Bush did have little but some presence on the American charts. “Running Up That Hill” originally reached no. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would be difficult, though, to find a non-hipster American alive at that time who remembers Bush as being as accessible as the show made her out to be. The phenomenon was the result of how music listening operates in the 2020s. The culturally diffusive capabilities of the Internet and the algorithm-based curation of platforms like Spotify and TikTok fostered two trends: the popularity of old music and the popularity of obscure music. These both converged to propel Schrodinger’s pop hit: a classic song that defined the ‘80s sound while not actually leaving a mark. Bush’s experimental but influential music placed her in the perfect zone for a new generation of listeners to adopt her as their Boomer alt-pop queen.

Image from Disney+ via YouTube.com