Running Up That Hill A Deal With God 2018 Remaster

by Kate Bush

It doesn't hurt me (yeah, yeah, yo)
Do you wanna feel how it feels? (Yeah, yeah, yo)
Do you wanna know, know that it doesn't hurt me? (Yeah, yeah, yo)
Do you wanna hear about the deal that I'm making? (Yeah, yeah, yo)
You
It's you and me
And if I only could
I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get him to swap our places
Be runnin' up that road
Be runnin' up that hill
Be runnin' up that building
Say, if I only could, oh
You don't wanna hurt me (yeah, yeah, yo)
But see how deep the bullet lies (yeah, yeah, yo)
Unaware, I'm tearing you asunder (yeah, yeah, yo)
Oh, there is thunder in our hearts (yeah, yeah, yo)
Is there so much hate for the ones we love? (Yeah, yeah, yo)
Oh, tell me, we both matter, don't we? (Yeah, yeah, yo)
You
It's you and me
It's you and me, won't be unhappy
And if I only could
I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get him to swap our places
Be runnin' up that road
Be runnin' up that hill
Be runnin' up that building (yo)
Say, if I only could, oh
You (yeah, yeah, yo)
It's you and me
It's you and me, won't be unhappy (yeah, yeah, yo)
Oh, come on, baby (yeah)
Oh, come on, darling (yo)
Let me steal this moment from you now
Oh, come on, angel
Come on, come on, darling
Let's exchange the experience, oh (yo, ooh)
And if I only could
I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get him to swap our places
I'd be runnin' up that road
Be runnin' up that hill
With no problems
Say, if I only could
I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get him to swap our places
I'd be runnin' up that road
Be runnin' up that hill
With no problems
Say, if I only could
I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get him to swap our places
I'd be runnin' up that road
Be runnin' up that hill
With no problems
Say, if I only could
I'd be runnin' up that hill
With no problems
(If I only could, I'd be runnin' up that hill)
(If I only could, I'd be runnin' up that hill)

Interpretations

MyBesh.com Curated

User Interpretation
# Running Up That Hill: The Unbridgeable Distance Between Souls

Kate Bush's towering achievement distills a profoundly simple yet impossibly complex wish: to truly understand another person by literally becoming them. The song's central premise—negotiating with God to swap places with a lover—speaks to the fundamental isolation inherent in human consciousness. Bush articulates what therapy sessions and countless arguments circle around: the maddening reality that we can never fully transmit our interior experience to another person. This isn't about romantic harmony or reconciliation in any conventional sense; it's about the existential loneliness of being trapped inside a single perspective, watching someone you love struggle to comprehend your pain while you simultaneously fail to grasp theirs.

The emotional landscape Bush navigates is remarkably sophisticated, moving beyond simple sadness into something more unsettling—a kind of frustrated tenderness. There's an almost violent urgency beneath the song's propulsive rhythm, a desperation that manifests not as weakness but as fierce determination. The thunder in hearts, the bullets lying deep, the inadvertent tearing asunder—these aren't the images of peaceful misunderstanding but of love as a site of mutual wounding. What makes this emotionally devastating is Bush's recognition that both parties matter, both are hurting, yet this mutual awareness doesn't actually solve anything. The song captures the paradox of intimate relationships: how closeness can somehow intensify distance, how love and incomprehension coexist so painfully.

Bush employs religious and mythological imagery to elevate a relationship conflict into something archetypal. The deal with God frames empathy as something beyond human capacity, requiring divine intervention—a bargain with cosmic forces. The hill itself becomes a brilliant multilayered symbol: it's simultaneously the obstacle between people, the effort required to understand another, and perhaps the impossible ascent toward transcendence. The progression from road to hill to building suggests escalation, an increasingly Sisyphean task. That repeated phrase about stealing and exchanging experience transforms empathy into something almost illicit, a heist of consciousness that ordinary human connection cannot achieve.

The song taps into universal experiences that transcend its ostensible romantic framework. Anyone who has watched a parent age without being able to understand their fear, anyone separated by gender expectations, cultural backgrounds, or neurological differences will recognize this yearning. Bush originally titled it "A Deal with God," foregrounding the spiritual dimension—this is about the limits of human connection itself, about how our separate bodies and minds create chasms that good intentions cannot cross. In relationships marked by power differentials or different lived realities, the desire to swap places becomes politically charged: if you could experience what I experience, you would finally understand why it matters.

The song's enduring resonance lies in how it validates a feeling most people have but rarely articulate: that being understood feels impossibly difficult, almost supernatural. Bush doesn't offer solutions or growth or learning to communicate better—she offers the fantasy of a shortcut, an acknowledgment that sometimes the work of bridging understanding feels genuinely insurmountable. The 2018 remaster, and the song's 2022 resurgence, prove its message remains urgent because we're still trapped in our individual perspectives, still wounding those we love through simple inability to fully comprehend their reality. Bush transforms relationship struggle into something almost mystical, suggesting that true empathy might be humanity's most beautiful impossibility.
Posted on Dec 1, 2025 by Athena