Fuckin’ obviously “Running Up That Hill” is the best hit of 2022, like, it’s not even a competition. Best I can do is salute (as if) all the other ones, and thank them for their effort, and then move on. “About Damn Time” was an impeccable Chic recreation; the salsa pastiche of “Bam Bam” sounded pretty excellent; “Provenza” had a misty air in its run of swallowed vocals; “Something in the Orange” was a real broken tune, “damned if I do, damned if I don’t / ‘cause if I say I miss you, I know that you won’t”; a bunch of other good, fine tunes here and there.
But like, I don’t know, get the fuck out of my way? What am I supposed to do with all you fine tunes? Keep listening to you as the years go by? Wishful thinking, alright! But I won’t entirely rule it out. Oh, but, you say – remember and cherish the times I spent with them throughout 2022? Be glad that they were around to hold me down??? GODDAMN if forgetting 2022 means forgetting about all of these songs, I’ll close the door on the way out myself! (Maybe “Something in the Orange” can stay.) You think you’re that important. So important, it doesn’t hurt you.
“Running Up That Hill” is an awfully honest piece of music. Why we got here, I don’t care much for, the meme process can shove it, gonna skip past that. The issue with “Hill” is one of aspiring to surrender, and falling far short of it. The song’s LinnDrums echo a proper running from the very first few seconds (with an opening that should be as iconic as the drum entrance of “Be My Baby”), but the running is too distant and we can’t approach it; but what we do know is, it’s never ending. Bush and the drums speak to each other for 5 minutes trying to reach that understanding, almost as if the reaching out between those 2 figures surpassed notions of gender to speak to a mutual, spiritual ground… but as far as they run, they’ll never actually meet. Their roads are parallel and being played on different screens. It’s merely impossible to run into someone (or something) else’s path, and Kate knows it, and she still runs. Partially to see if she can do the impossible. But she also runs in order to find a purpose that will get her to stop running.
Once the chorus hits, Kate’s voice drops her cooing affections and decides to get to that talk, using her stronger Irish roots in her tone, but the important part is the main Fairlight synth melody popping through the verses is forced to take a step back, and what takes its place is – well, it’s actually a balalaika, but in the presence of making a deal with God, it sounds like a damn intervention. Not a celestial or divine one, but one of chaos and frequencies: black-and-white bars suppressing the screen of the eye, flashlights flickering and then exploding, a determined fighter choosing to cloud up their mind. The deal is painful, it will remain painful, and the deal will also never actually come to fruition. But Kate can’t stop running.
“Hill”, and Kate, try to find the best within them from the positioning of total defeat. What’s the angle here, for ultimate empathy between everyone, that everyone understands each other’s struggles? Just a thought: what would that accomplish? We all should know, a lot of people just don’t care, and don’t want to know. “Hill” reaches for that ideal, but its attempts are mute and it knows it. It knows that everything is a choice. That its magnifying nature will kill it in the end (and so it does), and that maybe one day, it won’t have to keep doing this. Dropping all pretensions of transcendence, it could stop looking at the world, and itself, and think that something better could come by sheer instinct. “IS THERE SO MUCH HATE FOR THE ONES WE LOVE?!??!”, and the answer is “ooh-yeah yeah, yo…”. “Hill” may reach for more, but not once does it pretend that those goals can be done in a world with destroyed souls, with seemingly nothing to fight for.
And it does look, every day, like those options are running out. Maybe they’re not, but it’s the feeling, y’know? Low are one of my favorite bands, and years ago, when I discovered them, their debut album’s title intrigued me greatly: I Could Live in Hope. Never thought much of it, other than the irony of a title indicating hope and the music itself which was a catatonic groan towards any potential attempt or outreach to the rest of the world. This year, I played a lot of Low - not only after Mimi Parker’s death, a wrenching tragedy, one of the most open voices I’ve ever heard in rock music suddenly gone. I thought of Mimi a lot this year, and as it unfolded, I Could Live in Hope did start to make sense.
Because of course it does. Of course I could. Anyone could. It’s an option. The same way motivational guru fucks will tell you that “giving up is not an option”, like skeevy fucks hiding the truth! The candy! Kate Bush – if she only could – but she can’t. That’s one truth: longing for more than what you’re capable of. But accepting and embracing that what you’re capable of isn’t actually what you want, not what suits you, not what’s comforting or rewarding, not what will make you transcend or pass on – then what can you, or anyone else, do for you? You choose doom, all conversations are over. I Could Live in Hope tells many economical stories of sketched out characters barely getting by, if that: slidin’, lazyin’, lyin’ around instead of meeting the sea, goin’ inside out, cryin’, tryin’ and failin’ to die because they don’t have enough to do it with. The attitude of Low themselves is one of detachment: all these characters have dug their own graves, and at some point, when all ears go mute and there are other things to be done, all anyone can do is face that truth and hope others will face it themselves. Take responsibility. They tease a man in a song called “Rope”, only repeating, “You’re gonna need more”, and then they whisper as they walk away, “Don't ask me to kick any chairs out from under you”. Own up to your shit.
Sometimes, if enough time passes, and a big enough sequence of events occur that force out the good light within, and what’s left is living and going through inertia, embracing that there’s nothing left to be done other than to keep at it can be an exercise in strength. The proper ring of fire. You move on. You could also move forward, but you don’t. There is a potential freedom in admitting to that truth. The same kind of freedom as Kate admitting to her powerlessness, and fading as the hit of the drums can’t simply get her and her darling to “exchange the experience”, because the Fairlight won’t react. Its priority is to get by. It will see the way to try to improve later, but it will never take it as a certainty.
I listened to a lot of Hank Williams this year. I zeroed in on a pair of songs, which placed separately would still be stirring, but placed together (as they were an A-side/B-side single pairing) approach the quintessential: “Why Should We Try Anymore” and “They’ll Never Take Her Love from Me”. Tunes, respectively, for people reluctantly giving into pessimism, and people finding assertiveness from actually holding onto that pessimism. Like most of Hank’s finest, they are rejections of a tomorrow where he gets to make things shine, and he turns his back with all the “respect” and “care” that the other one deserves; in other words, a turning back that no one actually needs. He’s the martyr of his own desires and problems. His actions benefit no one.
The former addresses a destroyed relationship, based on false principles and wrongful promises, a miserable endeavor making everyone reach their wit’s end: “What’s the use to deny we’ve been livin’ a lie”. The latter sees a man on his deathbed, reflecting on the one love in his life that he’ll never get to take back, but choosing to never let it go, never doubting if that should be a mistake: “I thought I'd make her happy if I'd step aside / But I knew her love would never set me free”.
Both songs are heartbreaking, but that doesn’t matter. What these songs convey, on their own and together, is the power of clenching and feeling the belittlement, coming from yourself and others. Technically, these songs are about failed romance and relationships, but think broader: these are failed dreams. Dreams based on hopes and ideals that slowly got torn apart from the inside. “The dreams that we knew can never come true.” So now what’s left is acceptance of both the brokenness and (aren’t we stubborn) the refusal to put said dreams to rest. If we shall live with our shattered selves out in the open, then so we should; pretending otherwise is a lie. Just like we own up to our responsibilities, we own up to our contradictions. Yes, Hank, “the kisses we steal we know were not real”, but “even on the morning she became another's bride, I said they'll never, never take her love from me”. The wonderful closing mantra on “Try” is painful in its simplicity and potential usefulness: “And smile – don't regret, but live and forget”. But. “They’ll never, never take love from me”.
The “tearing you asunder” is accurate, and it must feel like that, but it’s also not entirely true. In “Take”, Hank laments that he broke her trust and, in one of the most brutal sentences I’ve ever heard, saw “her love turn into sympathy”. He alternates between his low voice, reaching the depths of the mic, and his nasal yelping; one of them checks the facts with shame, the other one admits with humiliation. But something else that he laments, never in the text but it’s there, is the disbelief in which he realizes he can buy. He can stop fueling a lost love, but why not this one? Why can’t he, indeed, live and forget, like he does everything else?
Because he has to face that option every day. We all need to. And to everyone here, Kate included, something always hurts. Others’ ambivalence, their own detachment, their breaking of promises, their false expectations met with despair, the notion of speaking and praying to someone else and feeling nothing in return. We managed to properly leave our houses again, and yet, we couldn’t take for granted that there was anything ever waiting for us outside. No longer being able to pause, now it’s all back and as much as before. Hank felt his love was half-hearted. If criterias have changed, would he be right? If the standard is to do everything so we “won’t be unhappy”, where do we draw the line? And to those who seek out not to, to actually stay within their zone and simply chug along and hold on to their shattered selves, what should we do? Sarah, you’re lazy. But could you doubt her? Why would you think you have the upper hand? If you know it’s not enough for two.
So, we get it both ways. Hank lifts away his need to keep trying something that’s failed beyond repair, but he won’t escape the ghost of the way it could have felt. Not the aspiration of what something else could be, but what that something could have been. I could live in hope, but “it works much better if I let it drag me around”.
But life doesn’t end when (and where) dreams do.
The last chorus of “Hill” is the melody sung a little before it’s actually supposed to, with many different yelping Kates screaming for help, unleashed little demons that are restless but ultimately harmless, because they lack any sort of connection to unite and be something strident. Guitars and synths sizzle, but their placing is empty, and we end while approaching nothing. All passion gets sucked out of the song before it even ends. The ending itself is subtly brutal, even a bit haunting: a small guitar picking, and the final reflection of the mantra, “If I only could, be running up that hill”, sung by male and female voices sunk into their chests, no longer starry-eyed, now brutal and shut. Unceremoniously, the running stops. Now it’s you and me.