FEATURE:
Always Be Mine
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith
Kate Bush: A Role Model for Communities and Outsiders
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ONE of the most important…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
aspects of Kate Bush’s influence and legacy is how she has touched communities beyond music. If you think about someone like David Bowie being this L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ icon. He is someone who speaks to outsiders too. Those who may feel alienated and misunderstood. This is the same with Kate Bush. This has been the case with her for years though, after the explosion of attention following the Stranger Things success – where her song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was used in a key scene -, that has increased. Kate Buhs gave Max strength. Whilst not explicitly mention in the series, many have speculated that Max might be bisexual. Max was at the centre a significant storyline that was focused around depression and suicidal thoughts. This occurred in Season 4, where she is targeted by Vecna. Max’s struggles were depicted as a metaphor for overcoming these feelings through a moving scene where she chooses to fight back against her desire to succumb to despair and depression; essentially ‘running up that hill’ to escape Vecna's evil grasp. Although Max didn’t attempt suicide on screen, her narrative is widely interpreted as a powerful representation of mental health struggles and the fight to stay alive. I have modified that from a Google search, though it shows that Kate Bush’s music had a key role in a series and scene that made a big difference to many people. Whether real or imagined, those struggling with mental health issues, being targeted or feeling ostracised, her music and words have huge power and importance. I said I would not return to Stranger Things for a while but, to start off this feature, it is an example of how Kate Bush is still so relevant and influential to this day. Even a song that was released nearly forty years ago, it transcended beyond the T.V. and resonated with people around the world! They identified with Max’s story and, as a consequence, found courage and comfort in Kate Bush’s best-known song.
Although Kate Bush does write songs that are individual and cannot be compared with other artists, there is a universal element to the words. That means her music reaches so many people and has this profound affect. Not only is Bush a role model for various sometimes marginalised communities and those sometimes voiceless. For women everywhere, she represents someone who succeeded in an industry by doing things her way. In an industry that remains sexist and misogynistic. Bush began producing her own work when she was in her early twenties. She was forthright about singles she wanted to have released. Being so strong-willed and independent was something of a revolution that has impacted so many women today. Not to compare her too much to someone like David Bowie, though he is someone people frequently discuss as this role model. An idol for communities like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people. Maybe we do not think of Kate Bush like that enough. Even if Kate Bush has not stated an alliance to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, it is not only Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and its success in 2022 that has been adopted by many in that community. A song about men and women swapping places to better understand one another could be applied to misconceptions and prejudices around gender fluidity, sexuality and even trans rights. The latter of which has been in the public eye recently. So many high-profile names showing themselves to be misunderstood and transphobic. Kate Bush is someone who has acceptance and love for all people. As such, her music has this very personal meaning. I have no doubt she has saved people’s live. At the very least, she has made countless people feel less alone. This mother stands for comfort. Our queen able to have a deep understanding of people who may feel alone or attacked.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
This is particularly pertinent when you consider how Bush’s music has undergone this generational evolution the past few years. How her songs now are reaching a younger generation that may have recently not known who she is. Even if their only reference is a Hounds of Love classic – one of the biggest desires is people to go beyond the obvious and dig deeper! -, they at least have this focal point and centre of gravity that they can bond themselves to. With platforms like TikTok and Instagram so powerful and popular, snippets of songs like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) are shared and can connect with people instantly. It is impossible to say the impact this one song has had in the last two or three years. It is not, as Graeme Thomson writes in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, about her quirkiness. The costumes, the weird inflection and vocal elements; the videos and visual sensations. There is this openness and frank aspect of her lyrics. Bush has been personal in her lyrics but she has always stated how people interest her most. Not in a satirical or joking way. In a loving and compassionate sense. Bush’s body of work is one of the most positive, affectionate and intelligent in music history. As someone who perhaps sees herself as outsider or shy, she knows how important her music is to people like her. It goes beyond that singular kinship. There is a steeliness and ambition in her music that very few before her demonstrated. With social media being a somewhat toxic forum, various communities come under attack and are subjected to such ignorance. Music cannot completely overturn radicalism and bigotry. What it can and does do is provide voice and connection. Even if an artist has not personally met you, they can give this sense of solidarity and allyship. At the very least, they can give hope and strength against a torrent of blackness and hatred. Kate Bush is an artist who has a large community of fans across all walks of life. Whilst there is no official name like Swifites (Taylor Swift’s fan) or Lovers (Kylie Minogue’s fan), these Fish People/Love Hounds have a mother and idol in Kate Bush!
Bush was and is a maverick. A futurist and icon. Someone who is a visionary with no real comparable peer. She created idiosyncratic work that mixes dark and gothic scenes with stunning natural vistas of sunlight. These weird and wonderful characters and some very real and human emotional hits. It is the variety and breadth of her palette that means Kate Bush is this role model for so many communities. Bush could not have been a success of such an enduring idol if she had succumbed to the worst instincts of the music industry: that demand for more and more work. Bush has managed to protect her privacy and work on her own terms. She has reshaped the world and impacted culture in a way few others have. The 2022 Stranger Things episode was the latest incident of her being this enormous agent for positive and change. Someone who is rarely seen but has this undying and huge influence. Kate Bush is everywhere. One does not even have to think about the extremes of Kate Bush’s genius or her steely determination and `strength to see how she has influenced others. Think about her gentle and kind nature. At a time when nastiness and prejudice is a more fascinating and talked-about commodity than decency, Bush remains this example of a huge artist with no ego or arrogance. This provides incredible strength to not only communities and those who feel alienated; every one of her fans can take something from those wonderful qualities. This feature from 2022 argued how Kate Bush is a role model for gentle souls. These words seemed to sum Kate Bush up: “She remained polite and good natured but private from the world of publicity and gossip. She opted out of competing for status set by the culture and instead carved out her own timeless creative space that was entirely apart from trends and scenes. Most importantly, and here’s the hard part, she directed all of her will-to-power into the creative act and manifested something of such extraordinary uniqueness that she didn’t need to direct it into her personality. To young people growing up in the mean spirited social media age, this makes her a really powerful role model of a different way to be. There is another path for those who want to find it. Her creations will be treasured long after the pushy and the sharp elbowed have been forgotten. As a great man once said, it takes strength to be gentle and kind”.
I shall end with some quotes that support the theory that Kate Bush is an ally and icon for the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. For other communities that often can feel attacked or not fully embraced. Although this article from 2014 unfairly attacks Miley Cyrus as being a bad role model and argues why Kate Bush is a better one, we need to see the article in healthier terms. Why Kate Bush is a good role for teenage girls (without dragging other artists down):
“The childishness is still there; but bearing in mind we're three decades on from her musical arrival, it's unlikely it's as contrived as it originally seemed. In fact, Bush might be the real Peter Pan of Pop. In her onstage drama she repeatedly presents herself as a fragile dependent abandoned by her appointed protector, forever crying for help. And while she's jettisoned the Wuthering Heights and Babooshkas, she's still drawn to songs like Cloudbusting, about children on the cusp of the disappointment of adulthood.
When it was released in 1985, Rolling Stone said of the Hounds of Love album – which she performed almost in its entirety in her shows this week – "Her vision will seem silly to those who believe children should be seen and not heard". As a 27-year-old she was artistically infantile, but in the most interesting, curious way. Thirty years on, she seems unchanged.
Assuming that the wild-eyed child-fixated figure was for real then, the authentic mighty Bush becomes a fascinating figure in the rock pantheon. Social media went into meltdown when the 22 Hammersmith gigs were announced earlier this year, and the run sold out in 15 minutes. How remarkable, that a middle aged publicity-shy woman without swagger or swank should hold such sway.
And while her natural disposition is a whispery fluttery one, Bush is not afraid of coming on like a no-nonsense mum when needs must. It's unheard of for an audience to put aside their smartphones during a show these days, but after she politely but firmly requested that that her audience maintained direct commination with her onstage, the house adhered. As, you feel confident, she knew they would.
I'm still not a convert to the earth mother thing – though I no longer write it off a mere schtick – but I can't think of many better role models for adolescent girls than Bush. Her unapologetic eccentricity, celebration of creative freedom, and, best of all, knowledge of and faith in her ostensibly weird self, is inspiring and empowering.
Like Miley Cyrus, she was signed to a major label in her teens, but unlike Cyrus (and this might not be Miley's fault) she has always appeared to be in complete control of what she did and how she was presented.
When she used her sexuality it felt like she was celebrating it, rather than employing it as a means of persuasion, pleading or protest. Listen and learn kids. And if you must, dance around a toadstool. Though even Kate Bush can't make that look cool”.
Kate Bush’s oddities and eccentricities – or her refusal to be boring, like everyone else and moulded into something the media wants – validates those who listen to her music and are like her. The media still lazily and idiotically labels Bush as a ‘recluse’. Because she is not a fame-hungry artist, she is dismissed as a hermit or someone who shuts herself away. As I have said many times, she is someone very normal who gets out plenty, but just not at premiers and that sort of thing. It is her remarkable reliability and un-starry quality that makes her a role model. I am going to get to two articles as to why Kate Bush is an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ icon. In 2018, more than forty years since the release of her debut single, Wuthering Heights, Attitude wrote why Kate Bush remains an icon to the gay community:
“Queer people identified with Kate Bush because of that otherness, because of her bravery and defiance, her fearless examination of previously ‘taboo’ themes, and her often high-camp performance style. As Rufus Wainwright told The Guardian in 2006: “She is the older sister that every gay man wants. She connects so well with a gay audience because she is so removed from the real world. She is one of the only artists who makes it appear better to be on the outside than on the inside.”
The magnificent, lushly exotic ‘Kashka from Baghdad’ from 1978’s Lionheart, is one of the prime examples of Kate’s celebration of the joy of the outsider status. “Kashka from Baghdad,” she sings over sensual piano chords, “lives in sin, they say, with another man – but no one knows who.”
Kate fixes her gaze firmly on an outcast couple, the music alternately romantic, enigmatic, and menacing, as male backing vocals chant aggressively behind her as she shrieks “at night / they’re seen / laughing / loving” but, by the time the narrator observes that “they know the way to be happy,” the aggression has subsided into regal elegance.
It’s a powerful statement of approval, and Kate herself put it simply when she told Interview Magazine in 2011: “I just liked the idea of this couple. Nobody really knew much about them—and they’re obviously having a great time.”
Observational songs like ‘Kashka’ highlight Kate’s keen eye for detail and empathetic lyrical style; her warm, graceful acceptance – and endorsement – of homosexual desire marked her out as an LGBT advocate from the outset.
Her frank openness and recognition of a gamut of gender norms and of the reality of sexual fluidity became a recurrent theme in her work; ‘Wow’, a biting satire of the theatrical business, finds Kate singing “He’ll never make the scene / he’ll never make the Sweeney / be that movie queen / he’s too busy hitting the Vaseline.” If we were in any doubt as to her underlying meaning, her performance in the video removes all doubt as she taps her buttock on the payoff line.
Kate’s deep and thoughtful understanding of men in her songs is an underrated value in her arsenal; there are the men sent to war in ‘Army Dreamers’, or the kindly but increasingly distant father figure in ‘The Fog’, the misunderstood mathematician in “Pi,” and, most of all, the exquisite ‘This Woman’s Work’, where she sings about parenthood and birth from the male perspective. And no one could inhabit Peter Gabriel’s lyric as the voice of reason and comfort in ‘Don’t Give Up’ better than Kate Bush.
Kate made hits of these songs, and they remain enduring in the public consciousness. She brought the joys and sorrows of hidden human life to the forefront through normalising phrases and ideas, and streamlined all elements of her craft into a unique musical and visual style.
What at first the public may mistake for novelty, or frivolity, reveals itself over time to be intelligent, compassionate, and wise.
Kate Bush is an LGBT icon for several reasons, not least because she built a successful career, without compromise, on her own terms, with thorough originality, ingenuity, and, crucially, trueness to herself. She did, and continues to do, things her own way, and is undaunted in her distinctiveness and navigation of the peculiarities of life”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: United Archives/Alamy
In 2022, Pink News charted Kate Bush’s rise from a pioneering ally to an eternal gay icon. The Stranger Things accolades and exposure confirmed that and, in the process, opened up her legacy and work to a new generation of potential fans. Few artists have such an impact on communities like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people like Kate Bush:
“Of course, it’s not just the television gods Kate Bush can thank for sustaining her over the years. As with many female pop stars through the ages, a driving force of her enduring popularity has been her deep-rooted connection with the LGBTQ+ community.
“Becoming acquainted with all of Kate’s work was such a unique experience that I’ve never had since. It was like meeting a great friend that you know will be in your life forever,” Olly Waldron, a 23-year-old gay male DJ and Kate Bush superfan, tells PinkNews. To Waldron, Bush’s music offers an escapism from the mundanity of day-to-day life which is very appealing.
“Of course, her earlier performances and videography were exceptionally camp and theatrical. However, the world she built, not only with her storytelling lyricism but also her production, is the most perfect escapism,” he explains. “Kate transcended all norms and genres that were present in the music industry at that time which I think a lot of queer people can relate to.”
For Peter, a 52-year-old graphic designer and self-described ‘queer bloke’, it is Kate Bush’s status as an “outsider” that tethers her permanently to her queer fanbase.
“She holds a special place in the hearts of queer people because she stands proudly on the outside of the ‘straight’ world,” said Peter. “She comes at everything from an obtuse angle.
“She soothes me, she frightens me, she keeps me sane and she lets me be insane. She tells me that as long as she is around, I’m not the only freak.”
Kate Bush wrote a gay love song in the 70s
Although Bush’s pop hits like “Wuthering Heights”, “Babooshka”, and “Running Up That Hill” have delighted dancefloors in gay bars around the world for decades, most super fans will agree that the gayest moment in the singer’s career is undoubtedly the song “Kashka From Baghdad” from her 1978 sophomore album Lionheart.
This typically peculiar song tells the story of a woman watching a gay couple living in the house opposite her who only come out at night as they fear persecution.
“Kashka from Baghdad lives in sin, they say with another man but no one knows who,” Bush sings over a distinct instrumental of piano, strumento da porco and pan pipes. Later in the track she sings of how she “longs to be with them” because “they know the way to be happy.”
“It blows my mind that she wrote and released such a pro-LGBTQ+ song as a teenager in the 1970s when it was then such a taboo subject,” says Olly.
“I was very young when that first came out and I didn’t know what to make of it,” Peter adds. “I couldn’t believe she was singing about homosexuality, it felt almost too much. I was scared I’d heard it wrong, and she was mocking but she wasn’t. I realise what a brave song that was now.”
For the many young Stranger Things fans discovering the enchanting world of Kate Bush for the first time this week, an abundance of spellbinding music and mesmerising performances await.
Bush’s vast catalogue of sounds and images can feel almost insurmountable at first, but it is a mountain so worth climbing for any queer pop music aficionado”.
Kate Bush is someone who gives so much strength and companionship to outsiders. To communities still under attack. Even for those who deal with mental health problems or personal struggles. Her natural compassion and kindness in conversation is represented through her music. Songs that people can identify with and see themselves in. Messages that hold enormous power and can mean different things to different people. From those misunderstood or feeling alone to people who feel like they do not feel like they fit in, Kate Bush is this idol and role model. This will be the case for decades to come. An extraordinary human being who is this singular artist. Determined, independent, idiosyncratic, humble, ambitious, odd yet relatable, Kate Bush has helped transform the lives of so many people. Her music has this incredible power. For those who are thinking of retreating or giving up, she has the ability to ensure that they…
STAY strong.