Towards a musical stylistics: Movement in Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’

Abstract

A very recent trend in stylistics proposes the extension of its field of enquiry to accommodate various forms of multimodal art. Reflecting as it does the growing semiotic complexity of contemporary aesthetics, ‘multimodal stylistics’ is a welcome development. So far, however, its proponents have concentrated on genres in which texts are complemented by, or realized through, the visual medium – films, stage plays, television series and illustrated books.

In this article, a multimodal stylistic analysis is attempted on a genre which has attracted little critical attention in linguistics – modern pop-rock music. A 1985 song by singer-songwriter Kate Bush, ‘Running Up That Hill’, is studied linguistically and musically. Employing a blend of stylistic and musicological techniques, and some of the insights provided by newborn multimodal stylistics, the author explores the complex ways in which meaning is created in a pop-rock song.