John Grant former frontman of The Czars is asked the usual 20 Questons on Pop Matters. At no.9 was “The creative masterpiece you wish bore your signature?”: “I think Hounds of Love or The Dreaming by Kate Bush are the sorts of masterpieces I could wish I had created. Or Man-Machine by Kraftwerk” …. Here’s what your karaoke choice says about you (according to Lauren Bravo of the Shoreham Herald): “Wuthering Heights: ladies undertaking this track will do so in the name of lolz, under the guise that it’ll sound so ridiculous they couldn’t possibly be taking themselves seriously. Do not be fooled. They secretly believe they are going to be ethereal in the extreme, channelling Kate Bush’s wide-eyed, mad-lady insouciance with their wafty arm movements and dog-decibel wailing. Sadly, their efforts will be such that Heathcliffe won’t let them in the window. However cold it is” … Matt Berry who plays the domineering boss in The IT Crowd has a new album out Witchazel: “Well, for me, 1978 was quite a big year in terms of being frightened by things, one of which was Watership Downand the other was Kate Bush …I also remember seeing Kate Bush on TV and I just thought that the countryside was full of sexy witches, but they were still witches. So it was that kind of atmosphere that I wanted to put into Witchazel, that kind of 1970s rustic British folk sound” – in Wales On-Line Matt says “I’ve felt that way ever since I saw Kate Bush performing Wuthering Heights on Top Of The Pops as a child … she frightened the life out of me. Something about the way she stared right in to the camera with those wild, glaring eyes. She looked like a sexy witch and it had a huge impact on me” … Kiki Dee including cover of Running Up That Hill in her recent European shows … Robyn credits Kate as influence (again) “I grew up in a theater family and learned to express my creativity in my own way and to be my own person. So for me, those things all kind of came together naturally, even in artists that I was listening to like Kate Bush. There have always been pop artists that can blend these worlds together — it doesn’t have to be contradictory” … Maryse Letarte is a Quebecois singer attracting some attention. She cites Kate as “one of her first idols” … Artinfo tells us that Pierre Huyghe’s new film has been causing a stir in the French art scene, with fellow artists, fans, and even students on field trips descending into the pitch-black basement of Marian Goodman’s Marais space to experience “The Host and the Cloud.” This includes most strenuously, a red-tinted disco scene with an unrelenting version of Kate Bush’s shrill “Wuthering Heights” playing normally at first, then in reverse …. retro-review of Peter Gabriel (III aka “Melt”) on SeattlePi refers to “Kate Bush’s deliciously haunting, repetitive chorus ‘jeux sans frontières'” on Games Without Frontiers ….There Goes a Tenner, Kate’s “forgotten” single, is re-apppraised on Eoin’s blog posting here … “It offered an alternative of trees, flowers, rivers, and made me seek these out in reality-style life, a longing already fomented by The Lord of the Rings. Though I still read the Rings regularly, I don’t read The Wind now. I’m wary of it. It’s like playing Kate Bush or The Beatles. They bewitch me, an experience about which one must always be ambivalent” Guest columnist in the Glasgow Herald … Denver Westword: “British music magazine MOJO referred to Ólöf Arnalds as “Reykjavic’s answer to Kate Bush,” which is fair enough considering Arnalds’ gorgeously otherworldly singing and penchant for writing songs that cannot be linked directly to any particular musical genre other than the all encompassing ‘popular music’.”
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