SCRIBBLE
Songs based on literature... I
am sure that lots of you have sung along to lyrics, without really knowing what it is that you are singing about. Recently I was belting out Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, when it dawned on me that the song was based on Emily Bronte’s wellknown novel. This got me thinking about other songs where the writer has drawn on classic literature for inspiration. In 1978, aged 19, Kate Bush released her debut single ‘Wuthering Heights’. This musical master piece topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks and she became the first female artist to achieve a UK number one with a self-written song. In several of Kate Bush’s works she embodies elements of historical and literary references. Her debut single was based on Emily Bronte’s classic of English literature "Wuthering Heights" which was published in 1847. Emily Bronte took inspiration for her novel Wuthering Heights from Romanticism including the novels of Walter Scott, gothic fiction, and Byron.
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by Willow Dowd
In the song Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush sings from the point of view of one of the main characters Catherine as she pleads to be let into Heathcliff’s, another main character’s, window. This can be heard in the lyrics ‘Let me in! I'm so cold!’ which is repeated throughout the song.
