Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)

Bush wrote and produced it. It was composed in a single evening in Sevenoaks in 1983 and was the first song written for Hounds of Love, starting from a riff on the Fairlight. She sang a drum pattern to Del Palmer, who programmed it on the LinnDrum, and she developed the track in early 1984 at her studio at East Wickham Farm with the engineers Paul Hardiman and Haydn Bendall. The main riff comes from a sampled cello sound that replaced a harp, the drone was made by freezing a chord in a Quantec reverb, and Stuart Elliott added snare and fills, Alan Murphy the guitar at the end and Paddy Bush a balalaika.

Bush explained in 1985 that it is about a man and a woman who make a deal with God to change places so each would understand the other. EMI asked for the shorter title, but she still thinks of it as A Deal with God. It reached number three in the UK in 1985 and number 30 on the US Hot 100. After a remix was played at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony and reached number six, Stranger Things used it in 2022, and it hit number one in the UK on 17 June, number three in the US and number one in eight countries. It passed a billion Spotify streams in June 2023.

Live and covers

Bush debuted it on the BBC chat show Wogan on 5 August 1985. In 1987 she sang it at The Secret Policeman's Third Ball with David Gilmour, and it was in the 2014 Before the Dawn shows. Covers include Placebo in 2003, Within Temptation in 2003, Chromatics in 2007, Meg Myers in 2020 and Car Seat Headrest in 2021. St Vincent performed it at the 2023 Rock Hall ceremony. Rolling Stone ranked it 60th on its 2021 list of 500 greatest songs.