Wuthering Heights (song)
"Wuthering Heights" is a song by English singer Kate Bush, released as her debut single on 20 January 1978 through EMI Records. Inspired by the 1847 Emily Brontë novel of the same name, the song was released as the lead single from Bush's debut studio album, The Kick Inside (1978). It peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart for four weeks, making Bush the first female artist to achieve a number-one single with an entirely self-penned song.[2] It also reached the top of the charts in Australia, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, and Portugal.
"Wuthering Heights" received widespread critical acclaim and continues to be highly regarded; in 2016, Pitchfork named it the fifth-greatest song of the 1970s,[3] and in 2020, The Guardian ranked it as the 14th-best UK number-one single.[4] The song has been certified Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), for sales and streams of over 600,000 units in the United Kingdom. In addition, a remixed version of the song, featuring re-recorded vocals, was included on Bush's first compilation album, The Whole Story (1986). This version appears as the B-side to her 1986 single "Experiment IV".
Writing[edit]
Bush wrote the song aged 18, in a few hours late at night on 5 March 1977.[5] She was inspired after seeing the 1967 BBC adaptation of the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.[6] She subsequently read the book and discovered that she shared her birthday with author Emily Brontë.[7]
"Wuthering Heights" is sung from the perspective of the Wuthering Heights character Catherine Earnshaw, pleading at Heathcliff's window to be allowed in. It quotes Catherine's dialogue, including the lyrics "I'm so cold", "let me in", and "bad dreams in the night". Cathy is in fact a ghost, which the listener may only realise upon reading the novel. Critic Simon Reynolds described it as "Gothic romance distilled into four-and-a-half minutes of gaseous rhapsody".[8] The music and lyrics establish a duality between the real world and the afterlife. The real world is associated with the past tense and a tonic of A major, whereas Cathy's afterlife is associated with the present tense and a tonic of D♭ major. The song also makes use of unusual harmonic progressions and irregular phrase lengths.[9]
Bush recorded her vocal in a single take.[10] Her performance uses manipulations in soft palate to produce changes in vocal timbre, a technique popular among Indian playback singers and in Peking opera.[9] The guitar solo is played by Ian Bairnson, who said that he initially disliked the tone for many years due to "purely guitarist reasons".[11] Bairnson played the solo with a broken arm.[12] Engineer Jon Kelly said he regretted not placing the solo louder in the mix.[13] The production team, with Bush, began mixing at midnight and stayed until "five or six in the morning".[10]
Release[edit]
Bush's record company, EMI, originally chose another track, "James and the Cold Gun", as the lead single, but Bush was determined to use "Wuthering Heights".[14] The single was initially scheduled for 4 November 1977, however, Bush was unhappy with the cover and insisted it be replaced. Some copies of the single had already been sent out to radio stations, but EMI relented and put back the single's launch until 20 January 1978.[15][16]
The single cover artwork mirrored that used for the album cover which featured a photograph of Bush, "clinging to a large painted dragon kite, gliding across a vast, all-seeing eye", taken by Jay Myrdal.[15]
"Wuthering Heights" entered the charts in the week ending 11 February 1978 at No. 42.[17][18] The following week it rose to No. 27, and Bush made her first appearance on Top of the Pops. The song was finally added to BBC Radio 1's playlist the following week and became one of the most-played records on radio.[19] In 1986, the first pressings of her first compilation album The Whole Story erroneously stated the release date for this single as 4 November 1977.[20]
Credits sourced from Sound On Sound[13]