Song of the Week #24 Kate Bush "December Will Be Magic Again"

This song is one of those busy tunes that sounds like it should have either become three separate songs, or an operetta. Still, I love it. This is one of those perfume songs for me. Some songs take me right to a place in time, the way the familiar scent of a perfume does. During my Kate years, I was living out in Scarborough in a house that overlooked Lake Ontario.

KB was my musical hero when I was a teenager. Her lyrics were so original and her music unlike anything else on the radio. A friend introduced her music to me when I was in Grade 8 and the following year Kate released her phenomenal Hounds of Love album. When she came to Toronto to promote the record on MuchMusic, I waited down on Queen St. (East - location of the old CityTV building). Sure enough, she came out and signed the back of my copy of Hounds of Love in silver marker. I will treasure it forever. Years later, when she released the disappointing Red Shoes, I was working as a freelance music journalist and I got to interview her. She was beautiful and so human. When the interview was over, I left the fancy hotel she was staying at and wondered what reasons I had to continue writing about music since I'd met Kate. Throughout the nineties, music changed and I found many new things to excite and write about, but nothing as great as Kate.

Here's the video for "Running up That Hill." Kate was a trained dancer and this is probably her last great dance piece. The lyrics are all about the difficulties men and women have relating to each other.