Despite having written more than 100 songs before the release of the first single, Kate Bush was only 18, in 1977, when she wrote her debut Wuthering Heights, inspired by Emily Bronte’s homonymous novel which was published more than a century before in 1846. Bush shares the same birthday as the book’s author, she also happens to be called the same as the Bronte’s most known character, Catherine. If the coincidences seem to be another excuse to justify the legitimacy of Kate Bush’s composition of the song dedicated to the book, the facts that she was a genius performer and an genuine talent remain undiscussed facts.
Besides acknowledging her remarkable voice, we need to add that she writes, composes and choreographs most of her songs, creating multidisciplinary and intertwined works of art and performances. Bush defines herself as “the shyest megalomaniac you’re ever likely to meet” and surely she was not supposed to be forgotten as she published the most literary hit single in history. Wuthering Heights was the catalyst of an incredible career in the music industry and, in hindsight, she was right to insist for it to be her first release despite pushback from her record label; it gained her the title of first female performer to ever have a self-written number 1 hit in the U.K.
Bronte’s book Wuthering Heights is a traditional Victorian realist novel mixing an accurate realistic depiction of setting, language and values of the Yorkshire moors with the ghost story genre typically associated with the “Heights” and the wild nature of the moors that Bush’s recalls in the song with “Out on the wiley, windy moors, we'd roll and fall in green”. The ghosts belonged geographically and historically to the moors and their folklore. The supernatural was still widely believed by lower classes, making ghosts an element that added to the realism rather than turn it into simple “fantasy”. Moreover, Catherine’s ghost after death allows the love story between her and Heathcliff to shift to a deeper level; a spiritual spiritual love.
Wuthering Heights is a story of middle class families (The Linton, Earnshaw and Heathcliff families) but above all it is a story of possessive love and obsession, which in Bush’s lyrics can be seen here: “You had a temper like my jealousy; too hot, too greedy”. The land of the moors becomes the place of the wild, haunted, unknown and is the setting for a story of obsession, hate and unconditional love: “Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream; My only master”. The narration spans three generations, yet the love story remains around Cathy and Heathcliff and their unresolved deep spiritual love. and Despite Nelly Deanthe, the housekeeper, being narrator in the book, Bush’s song puts Cathy’s point of view at the center and allows her to finally have her own voice: “Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy”. Bush decides to create a space where they can be protagonists of their own dramatic love and uses quotes from the book to allow Cathy from to speak as she pleads at Heathcliff's window to be allowed in “Let me in! I'm so cold!”.
But as mentioned before, Bush was not only singing beautiful songs, she was composing, writing and dancing, which is what makes her an eclectic and adaptive 360° artist. In 1978 the first Wuthering Heights video is released and it features Kate Bush dancing indoor a white dress, resembling Cathy’s ghost:
