Wuthering Heights revisited

wuthering
adjective Northern English dialect 
(of a wind) blowing strongly with a roaring sound
(of a place) characterized by such a sound

Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights  

Interesting facts about this song:

The song is based on Emily Bronté's book Wuthering Heights (1847). 

Catherine Earnshaw, “Cathy,” is a ghost longing for her former lover, Heathcliff, pleading at his window to be let in. 

It quotes Catherine's dialogue, including the chorus lyric "Let me in! I'm so cold!" and "bad dreams in the night". 

Bush noticed several coincidences during the songwriting process as if she were meant to write the tune. She explained: "When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption [tuberculosis], and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada.....I had this urge to switch on the TV - it was about one in the morning - because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on.....I ...then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that's all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence."

Bush wrote the song on March 5, 1977, at the age of 18, sitting at the piano; memorable because there was a full moon that night.

Bush also recorded her vocal in a single take. Bush and her production team began mixing at midnight and stayed until five or six in the morning.

“Wuthering Heights” proved to be one of Kate Bush’s biggest hits. It topped the British singles charts within three weeks (remained for four), becoming the first UK no. 1 song written and performed by a female artist. It also reached number 1 in Australia, Italy, New Zealand, and Ireland. It was equally successful in the Netherlands and Belgium, where it ranked at No.6 and No.3  respectively. 

Kate Bush and Emily Bronté share the same birthday, July 30. 

There have been a few covers, one notable one by American singer, Pat Benatar in 1980  and Elisa (2010)

Italian rapper, Er Costa, used Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" in a 2014 video.

The 1996 musical, Heathcliff, was also based on Wuthering Heights. 

A Flashmob, "The Most Wuthering Heights Day" was started in 2016 and is held worldwide every year. 

She has famously called upon literary classics throughout her career, including the conclusion of James Joyce’s Ulysses for her 1982 song,  ‘The Sensual World’.  Bush was inspired to write the song after hearing Irish actress Siobhan McKenna read the closing soliloquy from James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), where the character Molly Bloom recalls her earliest sexual experience with husband-to-be Leopold Bloom. 

You can read more at: Song Facts   NME   Song Meanings and Facts  Wikipedia