Boris Johnson tried to heap praise on Kate Bush yet somehow still managed to hit a bum note
Kate Bush (Hussein/Hulton Archive/Getty) and Boris Johnson (Dan Kitwood/Getty)
Boris Johnson has listed Kate Bush as one of five women who inspire him, but he wasn’t exactly full of praise for the legendary English songstress.
The prime minister picked five women who inspire him to mark International Women’s Day, and, to the surprise of fans everywhere, Kate Bush was one of them.
Johnson told Grazia that gay icon Kate Bush “stirred his emotions”, a claim that will come as a surprise to those who assumed he didn’t have any.
LGBT+ Kate Bush fans are very confused over Boris Johnson’s comments on the pop star.
The Tory leader then uttered his most blasphemous words yet. When speaking about Bush’s iconic music video for “Wuthering Heights”, he said he couldn’t understand why she “hopped around in a red chiffon thing”.
Needless to say, Bush’s many LGBT+ fans are up in arms over the comments. To reduce Bush’s famed red-dress to simply a “red chiffon thing” is a profoundly blasphemous statement and queer people rightly expect their God to be treated with a bit more respect.
https://twitter.com/discosioux/status/1235315428571983877
I refuse to let the fact that Boris Johnson claims to like Kate Bush affect me.
I'd rather look at it as confirmation that even a soulless, vain, narcissistic and unbearable eejit is capable of appreciating her genius. https://t.co/UKdIvZdiG9
— William G. Saraband 🏴🇵🇹🏳️🌈 (@wgsaraband) March 4, 2020
To make matters worse, the Tory leader also said he can’t understand all the words in Bush’s songs – he apparently has not yet discovered Google.
Of course, calling Kate Bush inspirational isn’t a radical act in itself. The singer-songwriter has had a career spanning more than four decades, released 10 acclaimed albums and countless extraordinary pop songs. She has dabbled in the literary with “Wuthering Heights” and “The Sensual World” and has even written songs about nuclear war (“Breathing”).
She also, of course, sang about a gay couple secretly living together in Baghdad in the 1970s on BBC television. If that’s not inspirational, we don’t know what is.
Bush clarified last year that she is not a Tory supporter following controversial comments in a 2016 interview.
But people aren’t exactly thrilled to see Boris Johnson queuing up to present himself as tribute to the Kate Bush stans for many reasons – one of which is that it certainly doesn’t help the 61-year-old pop star’s image.
Bush was mired in controversy in 2016 when she expressed support for then Tory leader Theresa May in a 2016 interview. Fans crumbled into disbelieving silence as her comments reverberated around the internet, setting her reputation alight in the process.
But all was salvaged last year when Bush released a statement clarifying that she is not, and never has been, a Tory supporter.
In the statement, she said the 2016 interview “could make it seem like I am a Tory supporter, which I want to make clear I am not”.
So Boris Johnson can admire Kate Bush all he wants, but it seems as though that admiration does not go both ways.
