The song Stevie Nicks and St Vincent both stood “in awe of”
There are certain songs that simply loom larger than others. No one really knows how or why – it’s not a case of them being the biggest hits or the bestsellers, it all comes down to the artistry. On rare and golden occasions, a song comes out that seems like true, high art, impressing fans and other musicians alike, and joining people like Stevie Nicks and St Vincent together in complete agreement.
These songs enter the world’s songbook. Everybody knows them, and everybody seems to love them, yet miraculously, despite being played over and over again on repeat, they never seem to lose their sparkle. They never get less special or less impressive.
Ears never go numb to them. It’s impossible to hear The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ and not be struck by the beauty of it, or to hear The Beatles ‘Hey Jude’ and not be swept away still by the impact of the final chanting refrain and the voices that rise to meet it.
Some art is simply too powerful to ever be tarnished, so instead it keeps its shine decade upon decade, inspiring generations of artists to come and moving generations of fans. On even rarer occasions, that shine is obvious right from the beginning.
That’s how Stevie Nicks felt when she heard Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’. Something about the divide of the Atlantic makes people forget that Bush and Nicks were rising at exactly the same time. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours landed in 1977, turning Nicks into a superstar, while Bush’s debut arrived only a little while later in early 1978, putting her on the map.
Throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, both were held up as two leaders of rock, and especially as two of the women pioneering a path for female artists to be strange, artistic and experimental, both clearly inspired by art, theatre and spirituality.
By 1985, the tie between them stayed close as Nicks was still battling through the pain of her split from Lindsey Buckingham and trying to make the band work when Bush released a song directly about the pain of love and its misunderstandings. When Nicks heard ‘Running Up That Hill’, she loved it instantly.
“That song I really loved because, what a great writer she is, and ‘Running Up That Hill’ was one of those songs that, when I first heard it, I went, ‘Oh, I wanna record that song someday,’” Nicks said to the BBC. That’s a habit of hers, as she admitted, “As writers, we do that whenever a song comes on the radio that we love, we say, ‘Oh, I wanna record it and reinterpret it.’”
There is no Nicks cover of the track, though, as she added, “Every once in a while, we do it, but you finally smarten up and go, ‘I can’t really do that song better than Kate Bush did, so I’m not gonna do it.’ Because if you can’t outdo her, then don’t bother.”
Decades later, though, an artist dared to try. To induct Kate Bush into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, St Vincent took on the iconic track, and while nothing can beat the original, her cover was as impactful and moving as the song deserved.
“It was everything,” St Vincent said about Bush’s Hounds of Love album, declaring it, “So urgent. So emotional. An entire sonic world. Deeply catchy and deeply bizarre. ART. Kate. Singular. Inimitable.”
“I stand in awe of Kate Bush. There is no one who could ever compare,” she concluded, proving that Bush’s impact only keeps rolling on into the generations below, as well as to her peers.
