While I have always liked the song, even reading the lyrics while listening to it I'm totally clue-free as to what it means. That's true of a great deal of music...another recent one is Kate Bush's "Running up that hill". The music is very cool and listenable, but lyrics mean nothing to me, and the video doesn't help.
A recent article says: “It's about a relationship between a man and a woman. They love each other very much, and the power of the relationship is something that gets in the way. It creates insecurities...” “It's saying, if the man could be the woman and the woman the man, if they could make a deal with God, to change places, that they'd understand what it's like to be the other person and perhaps it would clear up misunderstandings. You know, all the little problems; there would be no problem”.
My response? ...OK...whatever.
Aber Pilgrim!!! Where were you when you should have had text analysis in English class?
Compared to a lot of outright nonsensical or overly abstract lyrics, the words of Running Up That Hill are actually quite concrete and the (nicely done) modern dance-vid is almost didactic in its effort to bring the message of the song across: the dance represents the couple's struggles, when they do archers' poses it alludes to Cupid and their love for one another, but there are always issues of men being one way and women another - hence the groups of men and women wearing a portrait of Kate or her partner as masks. It's a constant struggle, running up that hill, running up that road, running up a building to reach/stay in touch with someone of the other sex. I think that's actually a pretty profound, deep and very adult way of looking at the issues a man/woman relationship faces. And the music transports that too, there is something longing, yearning, struggling in the music and that galloping rhythm.
That said, when I first heard the song, I thought Kate's deal with God entailed swapping places with Him - which I felt was an interesting idea as well.
High marks for using the beautifully literary word
asunder in a song text.
And Heart's Barracuda is in the tried and trusted tradition of rock bands having a go at their management/record ompany once they have become estranged from them (as fishes go, Barracudas don't have the best image), other examples are:
In Heart's case, Ann's rage was not only about money:
Ann Wilson revealed in interviews that the song was about Heart's anger towards Mushroom Records, who as a publicity stunt released a made-up story of an incestuous affair involving Ann and her sister Nancy Wilson. The song particularly focuses on Ann's rage towards a male radio promoter who came up to her after a concert asking how her "lover" was. She initially thought he was talking about her boyfriend, band manager Michael Fisher. After he revealed he was talking about her sister Nancy, Ann became outraged, went back to her hotel room, and wrote the original lyrics of the song.[3]
Producer Mike Flicker added that Mushroom Records was so obtuse in the contract negotiations that Heart decided to discard the album they were working on, Magazine—which the label still released in an unfinished form—and instead sign with the newly formed Portrait Records to make another record, Little Queen. As Flicker put it, "'Barracuda' was created conceptually out of a lot of this record business bullshit. Barracuda could be anyone from the local promotion man to the president of a record company. That is the barracuda. It was born out of that whole experience."[4]The riff, btw, is ripped off from Nazareth's cover of Joni Mitchell's This Flight Tonight as Heart themselves have readily admitted:
Not that they were the first to purloin that galloping guitar idea ...
