As a new generation continues to discover her via Running Up That Hill, musicians including Sharon Van Etten and Brian Molko reveal how the singer changed their lives
I was a late bloomer when it came to hearing Kate’s music. As a teenager I had moved to Tennessee and tried to do college but ended up coming back home to my parents with my tail between my legs. The first adult friend I made after moving back was a painter’s assistant named Alison, and she played me Wuthering Heights on a car ride through New Jersey. I hadn’t heard a melody that complex and in that high range before – or a song as exploratory in production and arrangement. The music Kate Bush makes is pretty genre-defying. Hearing her talk about Emily Brontë’s novel was something I’d never heard before, either; inserting herself into a story that wasn’t her own. I had never listened to music in such a literary way.
