Waffle

I remember disliking Within Temptation's cover of 'Running Up That Hill' intensely when it came out back in 2003. I saw the group perform it live at a festival that year and recall referring to it as a butchering. I'm a little milder about it now, though the added guitar chords still irritate me and it's still not my favorite non-Kate rendering of the song. Singer Sharon den Adel is giving it the best she's got and lifts it above the generically competent level.

On the video and especially the ending: when looking for these things on YouTube, if I can't find an official vid, I just pick whichever version has the best sound quality of the ones that I can find. I listened to this while typing the entry and didn't watch the video at all beyond the first 10 seconds. I can assure everyone that the short Lady Gaga sample at the end (actually a Boney M sample) is not part of Within Temptation's cover version, though perhaps I'd like it more if it was.

Tomorrow I will post a cover that is similar in approach, but which I find works a lot better.

Singer-songwriter Happy Rhodes performing "And Dream Of Sheep" as a guitar-based song, with excellent singing. I've loved this one for years. "Under Ice", the next song from The Ninth Wave, would have been an even better match for Happy Rhodes, who has written a few songs that are quite similar to it, but as far as I know she hasn't performed it.

Swimmer One - Cloudbusting by Biphonic Records
Coming directly from Swimmer One's own website, so for once we have no video but excellent sound quality. There is also a Free MP3 to download. I love this: the electronic sounds and the unusual accent of the singer. For years, I thought this group was Welsh, and the singer who sang on this might well be, but the group's bio says they're from Edinburgh.

(PS: at the time of scheduling this, I have not figured out whether embedding SoundCloud files actually works. We'll know after the post goes live, at which point I will take the time to fix the post if it doesn't work properly).

Apologies for the poor sound quality on this one. I couldn't find a better sounding clip on YouTube. If you like this, you may want to buy the single off iTunes, though:

Mila Drumke performing "Under the Ivy", the original B-side of "Running Up That Hill" live in a Borders in Chicago. Wonderful, emotional voice, simple arrangement with no trickery.

Ooooh... I had never heard of Michael Aaron before. I found this while looking for a version of "Mother Stands for Comfort" to balance out Jane Birkin's version from yesterday, and this one is just perfect. It embraces the darkness that Birkin's version merely hints at. A stripped-down version of the original arrangement with the focus on piano and vocals, and without Eberhard Weber's bass part, it still manages to be just as eerie.

Michael Aaron has done a whole series of Kate Bush covers, and I'm looking forward to hearing them all.

Released in the same year as Kate's Aerial, this cover version by Jane Birkin adds a lighter touch to "Mother Stands for Comfort".

Hey, it's a fanvid! For the longest time, I thought The Church were just a one-hit wonder. I've got "Under The Milky Way Tonight" in my iTunes collection; it's one of the 1980s tracks we used to rehearse when I was in a 1980s cover band, though I'm not sure if we ever performed it in public. So when looking for covers of Hounds of Love a few weeks ago, I was surprised to see their name come up, with something recorded fairly recently - 2007 or thereabouts. Turns out they've had a long career in Australia, where they're from.

They let "Hounds of Love" speak for itself, sticking close to the original arrangement, but making it sound more like a live band playing.

By the way: when I started this series just a few days ago, I thought I would be done in a month. Since then, nearly every cover I knew that I looked up on YouTube had a cover by another artist in the list of "Similar videos". I have also come across two sites that had lists of Kate Bush covers. The most recent one was linked on the Kate Bush News pages the other day: The Simple Atheist featured six covers of "Wuthering Heights", three of which I was unfamiliar with, and one I knew about but hadn't heard. The other was an earlier list of the Top 10 Kate Bush covers posted by Songpeople, which has some well known versions by Placebo and the Futureheads, which I was planning to feature here in the next week or so

I now think I will be able to fill six months to a year if I really want to. Out of courtesy to these other sites, I will try to move the covers they featured further to the end of the run. There's plenty more to go around!

Hey, it's an official video! GreenlandicFaroese singer Eivør offers a tense version of Hounds of Love that slowly builds to the familiar beat. She's a good singer too - though I must admit I find her accent takes some getting used to. Judging from the comments on YouTube, this one divides opinions. I love it!

A completely different, Green Day-esque approach compared to the straightforward reading that Pat Benatar gave the song. I like this quite a bit but I also know it's not everybody's cup of tea.

There's quite a few covers of Wuthering Heights on YouTube, but for variety, I'll post some other songs first.

To fill the time while waiting for The Director's Cut, I'm gonna post a Kate Bush cover every day for a while. In the past decade, covers of Kate's work have proliferated and I expect to be easily able to fill a month.
Canadian singer Pat Benatar was probably the first person to cover a Kate song, back in 1980, so who better to kick off with. Until today, I had never heard this version in my life, but it's actually pretty good. Not the most imaginative one, especially tempo-wise, but pleasing to the ears.