King Of The Mountain by Kate Bush

Album: Aerial (2005)

Charted: 4

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This is about the death of Elvis Presley, and how many people believe he is still alive. The song also deals with the issues of fame, drawing parallels between Elvis and the 1941 film Citizen Kane. The movie is about a powerful publishing tycoon who confounds journalists with his mysterious deathbed utterance, "Rosebud," which ends up being the name of his childhood sled. (Hence the lyric, "In the snow with Rosebud.")
This is the first single take from Kate Bush's album Aerial. It was her first release in 12 years, since her 1993 album The Red Shoes. Bush's 8-year-old son, Bertie, drew the picture on the cover of the single. >>>
Suggestion credit:
Simon - Southampton, England, for above 2
Bush's drawling vocal delivery is meant to be an impersonation of Elvis.
She first recorded a rough track just two years into her hiatus. Most of the vocals were from the original demo because she couldn't capture the same feeling when she revisited the tune years later.
Despite her years of experience navigating fame (she was just 19 years old when her debut single, "Wuthering Heights," hit #1 in the UK in 1978), Bush insists the song isn't autobiographical. "I was very much writing about Elvis," she explained in a BBC4 radio interview. "I mean that kind of fame that he must've been living with, must've been unbearable... I can't imagine what it must be like. I don't think human beings are really built to withstand that kind of fame."

Comments: 1

Philip from Akron, OhThis song was released some 10 years after it was recorded (similar in age to the b-side recording, a cover of "Sexual Healing" originally done for an album by the Uileann-pipe player Donal Luney).

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