A Critic's Meta-Review: 4/5
Heathcliff is real. Do you want to know how I know that? Because I am Heathcliff.
Seriously.
Consider, for a brief moment, Heathcliff’s background - a “dark-skinned gypsy” whose mother was an “Indian queen” and whose tortured soul can only be understood by my own, personal Catherine.
But this is not a review of my melancholy existence.
This is a review of one of the most beautiful works of art pop* that has ever been produced.
Kate Bush - you splendid songstress, you. What a truly beautiful, literary-inspired gem you chose to hang your hat up on and ride to the top of the charts with, establishing yourself as a perennial darling of indie kids all across the land.
Kate Bush - the queen of all hipsters. Or is that Kate Nash? Nah...definitely Kate Bush.
I mean, come on. Pat Benatar covered this song. Pat freaking Benatar. “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” Pat Benatar. That Pat Benatar. However, I would have to give the title of the best cover of this song to none other than Britain’s dynamic duo of humorous heavyweights, the estimable Noel Fielding and his patty-cake pally boy Steve Coogan (a phenomenal actor, by the way - Tropic Thunder, Cigarettes & Coffee, Curb Your Enthusiasm...the man knows a good role when it comes across his desk, that’s for
*not to be confused with pop art - that was Andy Warhol’s shtick
sure) during BBC One’s annual Comic Relief benefit show back in 2011. That one, easily, takes the cake here. I mean, the sheer coordination - the choreography, the pageantry of it all. Not to mention the costumes.
Oh yes...the costumes.
Still, though. I can’t get past the genius of the original. It is simply just too glorious. Alas, we must shift our focus back to its nineteenth-century literary muse. Well, what really can be said about it that I did not already say about the Kate Bush song? Really, I mean - Kate Bush, Emily Bronte; po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe. All the same: beautiful women from England who composed some of the most groundbreaking works of art that have ever graced this mildly inhabitable (increasingly less so by the day) planet of ours. It is only a shame that the Bush family does not, due to the relative ubiquitousness of the surname, enjoy the same legacy as the Bronte family. I am sure they were all great folks.
Damn Prescott...
