Kate Bush has praised an “utterly wonderful” cover of ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Pub Choir, a Brisbane-based amateur singing group.
The singer, who is enjoying the renewed appeal of her 1985 single, which recently spent three weeks at Number One in the UK’s Official Singles Chart, wrote to the choir to express how much she loved their rendition.
“Dear Brisbane Pub Choir,” Bush’s message began [via The Guardian]. “I’ve been so busy that I’ve only just had the chance to watch you all singing RUTH. It’s utterly, utterly wonderful! I love it so much! Thank you everyone. You sing it really beautifully. I’m incredibly touched by your warmth and all your smiling faces. Thank you!”
Brisbane’s Pub Choir founder and director Astrid Jorgensen told The Guardian about the experience of hearing Bush’s reaction.
“My manager called me and said, you’ve got to get home, Kate Bush has emailed. I ran straight back – I was literally running up that hill,” Jorgensen said.
“It is so wild. She is the biggest artist in the world right now, so to have her say she was moved by our performance, yeah, that is a peak.”
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Pub Choir, a communal amateur choir, performed ‘Running Up That Hill’ two weeks ago in Brisbane, Australia. Approximately 1,600 people gathered to sing the hit, which is back in music charts around the world thanks to its appearance in season four of Stranger Things.
Jorgensen added that she and her team had put in a licensing request with Bush’s publishers a while ago to cover the song. “The response we got back was pretty much, ‘Good luck – we’ll ask, but maybe plan for a different song,” Jorgensen continued.
But Bush gave permission 10 days before the show. “Even that was a massive deal, the idea that she approved,” Jorgensen said.
Jorgensen, who arranges the music performed by Pub Choir, said she can sometimes “feel a bit cursed by songs we cover, as I have had to think about it so much that I won’t want to hear it again for a bit”.
She continued: “But I just came to love ‘Running Up That Hill’ more and more, every time I dug in, it is so complex and unique. So it is very, very cool to have her permission to begin with, then validation that we did OK.”
Bush’s song has now broken three Guinness World Records following the recent resurgence of ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’.
The English singer-songwriter, who last released an album in 2011 (‘50 Words For Snow‘), has reportedly generated an estimated $2.3million (£1.9million) in streaming revenue since the song’s inclusion in Stranger Things.