Héloïse Letissier of Christine and the Queens recently recorded an episode of BBC Radio’s Live Lounge, performing “5 Dollars” from her 2018 album Chris and an unexpected cover. She introduced it as her take on Rihanna‘s 2016 hit “Kiss It Better,” which wasn’t untrue, exactly, but it wasn’t long before she began introducing elements of Kate Bush‘s classic debut single “Wuthering Heights” as well.
Letissier’s amalgamation of the two tunes works smoothly, and if you didn’t know the originals, you might think it was just a single song. But it also introduces some funny cognitive dissonance, which is maybe part of the point: imagining Cathy and Heathcliff, Victorian-era characters from the Emily Bronte novel that inspired Bush’s song, saying things like “who cares when it feels like crack” and “make it right, make it all night long” to each other. “Kiss it better, Heathcliff,” Letissier wrote on Twitter this morning.
Kiss it better, Heathcliff ?
— Red (@QueensChristine) November 21, 2018
In October, Christine and the Queens performed the Chris track “Comme Si” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. On a previous BBC Radio live performance, Letissier played “Tilted” and “Saint Claude” from her debut album Christine and the Queens. You can hear her unlikely Bush-RiRi mashup here, starting at around 2:10:00.
