kate bush

Big Boi Shares His Love For Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ In A Resurfaced Video

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Big Boi 2022 8 Ball & MJG vs UGK VERZUZ
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Things just keep getting better and better for Kate Bush. She recently earned the first top-ten song entry of her career with “Running Up That Hill.” On this past week’s chart, the song checked in at No. 8 which gave her the highest chart position of her career, a peak that was previously No. 30 for her. The song’s resurgence is due to it playing a big role in the recently released fourth season of Stranger Things. The song’s new success has also shined a light on those who previously shared their support for the record, one of them being Big Boi.

Back in 2018, Big Boi sat down with Pitchfork for their “VERSES” series and praised the song’s production as well as Bush’s vocals. “I loved the production first and foremost because it set a tone, and then the way she was singing the songs, her voice was just angelic. I hadn’t heard anybody do it like,” he said. “It was just so weird, the sounds and what she was talking about, it was just kind of crazy, and then it was like, you know she produced all this stuff too’ so I was like, ‘Oh man!’”

Big Boi continued, “I always thought of her like the Phantom of the Opera. She’s somewhere living big castle with a piano that was ten times the size of a regular piano, playing it all day, with sheer curtains blowing in the window all, like Rapunzel but on the top of a hill somewhere in a castle, desolate, playing a piano and wailing. I thought it was cool.” He added:

For one, it was good to pedal too. It made you go fast. When the drums came on it was like a workout song. I had to ride like 20 or 30 blocks to school. So, I would just listen to it and ride, it was adventurous. The hook comes in and it makes you pedal faster. By the time I got to school, I probably sweating like I just got out of P.E. class.

You can watch the full “VERSES” episode with Big Boi in the video above.

Kate Bush and Big Boi Recorded A Song Together, But Will It Ever Be Released?

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Kate Bush once famously took a 35 year hiatus from performing on stage. The iconic British singer and producer is among music’s most notorious recluses. And despite the 2016 Before The Dawn live album, has not released any music since and any news of future releases has remained consistently absent. Until now…

Appearing on The Fader Uncovered Podcast with Mark Ronson this week, Big Boi dropped a bombshell so to speak, that he had not only recorded a song with Bush (whom he idolizes), but that it’s “…a monster hit with Kate Bush — that I’m just holding.” He explained on the show that in 2014, around the time of the Outkast 20th anniversary tour and when Bush came out of that 35 year performance retirement for a 22-date run of shows at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, he and his wife went to see her live. He met Bush backstage after the show, exchanged numbers and stayed in touch. “She’s a very, very, very classy lady,” he said.

Big Boi then details a dinner he went to with Bush at a pub where they sipped “almond cognac,” before eventually working on this mysterious song. “It’s a dream come true and the people are gonna f***ing love it. It’s f***ing incredible,” he says. But he stayed coy on the song’s release, stating that “Whenever I think they deserve it, I’m gonna give it to ’em.” He also intimated that the song could be “that perfect art piece” to go with a visual component necessary for a release as an NFT.

The news of this collaboration really came out of left field, but not so much considering Big Boi looked up to Bush growing up. He revealed that Bush was one of the reasons he got into making music and that he would ride his bike to school as a kid listening to “Running Up That Hill.”

“The world gotta hear it cause it’s uplifting,” he said reflectively of the song. “It’s the last piece of the puzzle as far as my legacy goes.”