Kate Bush is back on the charts (and forever in our hearts)

Plus, the debut of 'Omar,' a thoroughly American opera

View this email online June 11, 2022 by Marissa Lorusso This week, we’re sharing more videos from the Tiny Desk’s Black Music Month celebration — plus, “Running Up That Hill” sprints up the charts.   Chris Moorhouse/Getty Images I’m honestly a little jealous of younger listeners who recently heard Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” for the first time. That song can make you feel like you’re in your own universe — thanks, in large part, to the epic, otherworldly sounds Bush coaxed out her beloved Fairlight synthesizer — but Bush’s voice and the song’s insistent percussion make it all feel urgent and human. The song was originally released in 1985, but it’s been gaining new fans lately since it was included in recent episodes of the Netflix series Stranger Things. Lots of new fans, in fact: While “Running Up That Hill” peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 when it was first released, it re-entered the Hot 100 this week at No. 8., making it Bush's first-ever U.S. Top 10 single. It’s rare, but not totally unheard of, for older songs to reemerge on the charts years later like this. In 1992, Queen's “Bohemian Rhapsody" — which was originally released in 1975 — reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 after being featured in Wayne’s World. In 2000, a song by British folk singer Nick Drake — who saw little commercial success during his lifetime, and died in 1974 — was featured in a Volkswagen commercial, spurring a huge boost in sales of his record Pink Moon. And just a couple years ago, an extremely vibey video on TikTok featuring Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” gave that song a new life; it reached No. 12 on the Hot 100, four decades after its original release. I’m not the only person on the NPR Music team celebrating the Kate Bush revival. My colleague Ann Powers has been a devotee since she first heard Bush’s music as a teenager. Ann wrote about that experience — and her lifelong relationship with Bush’s album The Dreaming — in a moving essay in our Turning the Tables series last year. Ann and I talked about that essay, and about how the records we love can challenge us, for an episode of All Songs Considered earlier this year, too. Many of our colleagues agreed: In a more just world, Bush’s music would be all over TV shows and movies. So we made our own Kate Bush cinematic fantasy league, recommending some of her best tracks and how they might fit into TV or movie syncs. As the artist herself put it: Let the weirdness in. Newsletter continues after sponsor message New Music Early versions of some of Lou Reed’s most beloved songs were recently unearthed and will be released in August. On All Songs Considered’s New Mix this week, hear a very early rendition of what would become a Velvet Underground classic, "I'm Waiting For The Man.” Singer-songwriter S. G. Goodman put out a stunning album last week called Teeth Marks, full of songs that are ”refined in a recalcitrant way, and put across with wiry but emotionally present resolve” as writer Jewly Hight puts it. Jewly spoke to the Kentucky artist about the roles small-town life and bottled trauma played on the making of this new record. On the List is a playlist from Jazz Night in America that features the team’s favorite new releases every month — from traditional tunes to avant-garde adventures to electronic experiments. This month’s update includes tracks from Jonathan Barber, DoomCannon, Nduduzo Makhathini and more. Featuring A new opera called Omar tells the true story of an enslaved man taken from his home in what is now Senegal and trafficked to South Carolina. The opera, by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, premiered recently at the Spoleto Festival USA, less than a mile down the road from where the man was sold and after which he spent five decades on plantations, including the one at which he wrote his autobiography. Dave Smith, a pioneer of the synthesizer, died last week at age 72. Smith revolutionized pop music with the creation of the Prophet-5 synthesizer, as well as the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, better known as MIDI, which allowed digital instruments to speak the same language for the first time. For five decades, the only way to hear the sprawling psychedelia of Japanese band Les Rallizes Dénudés was through live bootlegs. Now, with the release of a 50-year-old live recording called The OZ Tapes, an official chapter for the band begins. This week, our friends at WNXP shared a video of Allison Russell performing three songs live from the station’s Sonic Cathedral. Tiny Desk NPR The Tiny Desk’s celebration of Black Music Month continues this week with sets by British-Nigerian Afrobeat star Naira Marley and multidisciplinary artist FKA twigs, including a performance of a new song called “killer.” Also this week: Folk singer and violinist Gaelynn Lea won the Tiny Desk Contest in 2016. Since then, she’s performed around the world, co-founded a coalition that amplifies disability culture in the music industry and recently wrote music for the production of Macbeth currently on Broadway that stars Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga. The Tiny Desk Contest team caught up with Lea to hear about her journey from the Tiny Desk to Broadway.   One More Thing For friends of Dorothy Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WUFT 89.1 (edit station). Need a new playlist? Follow NPR Music on Spotify and Apple Music What do you think of today's email? 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