Heathcliff in Stereo: The Modern Sound of “Wuthering Heights”
The upcoming “Wuthering Heights” movie reimagines Brontë’s brooding classic through a Gen-Z lens. Prepare for the film and pair the novel’s extremes of love, rage, and despair with the stormy sounds of artists like Hozier and Kate Bush.
Written by Caroline McConnico
Illustrated by Fiona Randazzo
Through the misty moors, a brooding figure cuts across the horizon — a shadow haunted by betrayal, trailing sorrow like a storm cloud. Six-foot-five, with unruly sideburns and a stare that borders on feral, the figure is none other than Jacob Elordi in the newly released “Wuthering Heights” trailer, where director Emerald Fenell reimagines Emily Brontë through a Gen-Z lens.
The film, starring Elordi as the tormented Heathcliff opposite Margot Robbie’s untamable Catherine, has caused quite a stir. Purists bristle at its flashy reinterpretation of Brontë’s 1847 gothic tragedy as a sweeping romance, while others welcome its modern take, eager to see one of literature’s most turbulent love stories pulse with new life. Whether you’re swooning or seething, one thing is certain: this adaptation will leave a cultural mark.
At its core, this film suggests that Brontë’s novel, though firmly rooted in the 19th century, remains startlingly resonant in the 21st, especially for a younger audience fluent in aesthetics and soundtracks. Brontë’s text has always lived in extremes: Rage and longing, love and despair, violence and tenderness. Translating those emotional crescendos into the language of contemporary music makes the story legible to a new generation. Imagine the bleak Yorkshire moors filtered through the sonic palettes of Hozier, Florence Welch, Fiona Apple, Lana Del Rey, The Smiths, and, of course, Kate Bush. These artists not only match the novel’s stormy intensity but also infuse it with a distinctly modern sensibility: vulnerable yet theatrical, ironic yet sincere, raw yet cinematic.
Take Hozier’s “Unknown / Nth,” a track that builds from hushed intimacy to a near-religious crescendo. Its themes of betrayal and aching devotion embody Heathcliff’s obsessive love, recast in a sound that feels accessible to today’s listeners. Or consider Florence + the Machine’s “The Bomb,” which mirrors Catherine’s divided heart with airy restraint and an almost eerie serenity, modernizing her struggle as one between desire and stability.
Fiona Apple’s “Never Is a Promise” translates Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s inner turmoil into raw vulnerability as Apple sings about stumbling to understand her own self-worth following a devastating break-up. Lana Del Rey’s “Thunder” drapes gothic yearning in cinematic melancholy, as though it were written for the moors themselves. Del Rey’s voice drifts like the wind through the desolate hills, aching for escape, with the song’s fragile yet commanding lyrics channeling the gothic intensity of “Wuthering Heights,” defining love not as a comfort, but as a force of nature.
Even The Smiths’ “I Know It’s Over” reframes despair as something almost ironic, wrapping existential isolation in jangly guitar lines. The song uses vivid imagery of being “buried alive” with anguish, tying gloom up with a bow. The powerful repetitive outro in which Morrissey cries for his mother, leaves a “Wuthering” aftertaste of lost family and haunted generations. Lastly, who can forget Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” an already iconic piece that becomes newly relevant as the song’s theatrical intensity mirrors the film’s heightened, modern drama — less a quaint homage and more an anthem reframed for a post-TikTok generation that revels in nostalgia and excess.
By weaving Brontë’s dark romance into a modern soundscape, younger audiences can experience their own Victorian tragedy with the tap of an iPhone. Songs like these capture the novel’s emotional violence while placing it squarely in today’s cultural language. In the end, the upcoming adaptation doesn’t just restage “Wuthering Heights,” it remixes it and allows angsty teenagers to connect with classic literature in a whole new way.