Music Video of the Day: Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush (1985, dir. David Garfath)


Diane Grey choreographed the video and Michael Hervieu is the other dancer. It’s pretty self-explanatory. It has do with relationships, exchanging places with your lover, etc. There are other blog entries out there that do good jobs talking about it–even in Kate’s own words. I will make special mention that it is not about exchanging places with God regardless of the crucifixion bit. Hopefully this blog entry is still up because it does a good job summarizing it.

I love it because it is simple, beautiful, and does a nice Twilight Zone type thing to have the lovers pulled apart near the end. Also, it stands out among other videos of the time. I’m not saying that it makes it any better, but sometimes it is nice to do something different, and I think that fits very well with Kate Bush.

The blog I linked to above says that MTV didn’t want to air this back then. That kind of surprises me. I get that it’s no Babooshka or Army Dreamers. However, Kate Bush is the first artist I’ve come across where when I recently bought two of her albums, I felt like I was only getting half the picture. The song Cloudbusting isn’t the same on its own. I would think that from MTV’s perspective, they would want something that people would come back to see rather than simply watch, buy the record, and move on. I know there are other circumstances, but I find it a little difficult to wrap my head around the idea that a lack of lip-syncing would be so much of an issue that they preferred to air a live performance of this song.

Director David Garfath has done camerawork on some notable films such as The Empire Strikes Back (1980), An American Werewolf In London (1981), and Brazil (1985).

Enjoy!

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