“Before the Dawn”, Kate Bush’s recent run of shows at London’s Eventim Apollo, saw the unique singer/songwriter/performer return to the stage after a 35-year break. Her 25-song set featured two expansive song cycles, The Ninth Wave (from Hounds of Love) and A Sky of Honey (from Aerial), with a short opening segment devoted to a selection of post-1982 hits.
Considering the formidable back catalog of someone as musically gifted as Bush, the inevitable dilemma is what to leave out of any top 10. With 10 studio albums and 33 singles to ponder, it’s a particularly tough ask. Despite Bush’s status as a national treasure in the UK and considerable success around the world, her career has never really taken off in the US. Six albums and four singles have charted stateside, topping out at No. 28 for The Red Shoes and No. 30 for “Running Up That Hill”.
Today, her sixth studio album, The Sensual World, turns 25. To celebrate, we put together a proper crash course — her best songs to date — that should bring everyone up to speed on what they might have been missing.
06. “The Sensual World”
The Sensual World (1989)
Here, amidst Macedonian hooks, Bush whispers lyrics that pour with the opulent nectar. Never before had I heard anything that so aptly combined sexuality with poetry. It is “sensuality” in every sense of the word — not lewd or bawdy, but graceful and hungry for all the pleasures of living. It was too enticing to resist.
The song was inspired by Molly Bloom’s monologue from the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Instead of writing her own lyrics, Bush was originally going to take the character’s speech verbatim from the end of the book. But she couldn’t secure the rights (until it was re-recorded in 2011) and instead wrote lyrics about Bloom stepping from the pages of the book to be enraptured by the beauty of existence. It’s a classic situation of artist creating genius from limitations.
03. “Hounds of Love”
Hounds of Love (1985)
When I talk about Kate Bush, I worry I sound like a crazy person. I mean, if some rando told you that the strange lady who sings about a book you had to read in high school “lives in the wilderness of my soul,” you’d have every right to be cynical. To my credit, I haven’t ever said that to anyone – but I come close every time. That’s the thing about her … she’s a modest, normal person and is perhaps too polite to openly say that she’s channeled ancient forces that, though long forgotten by man, lay dormant within all of us. That’s what “Hounds of Love” is about.
Hear me out. At face value, “Hounds” is a narrative about being afraid of giving in to love personified as a pack of dogs hunting the singer. But there’s something larger at play, something goosebump-invoking that, much like a spell, is only made clear in the sum of its parts. The synths and strings mesh perfectly with a powerful rhythm, combining the ancient (drums) with the most celestial sounds man has invented. “Hounds” commands dancing. If you’re listening to the song and feeling it, it’s not an option — it’s speaking to you.
02. “Running Up That Hill”
Hounds of Love (1985)
“Running Up That Hill” is an exhausting emotional dive masked in the carefree gleam of the ’80s. With steady drumming and warbling synth, it’s a song whose pain is never diminished because it pulses with determination, even when Bush is face to face with defeat. It doesn’t matter how many times we hear her worried questioning: “Is there so much hate for the ones we love?/ Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?” She’s there encouraging us to keep fighting.
There’s a reason everyone from Placebo to Wye Oak has covered the song. Its wavering status as a double-edged sword makes it both an ideal Saturday morning workout song and the cue for an existentialist sob. It’s as complex as we want it to be. Not only was “Running Up That Hill” Kate Bush’s first 12″ single, but it was one of her riskiest plays with religion. Originally titled “A Deal with God”, the single saw Bush penning the tale of man and woman trying to understand one another and, ultimately, asking to make a deal with God instead of the devil to do so. The twisted nature of the religious role reversals doesn’t come across as dark until the very end of the song when a warped version of her voice sings demonically and is cut. If you’re not careful, you may miss it. Then again, maybe that’s the point. -Nina Corcoran
01. “Wuthering Heights”
The Kick Inside (1978)
Kate Bush was just 19 when her Emily Brontë-inspired debut single displaced Abba’s “Take a Chance on Me” as the UK’s No. 1 in February 1978. According to the singer, the initial spark for the song came from catching the end of a film adaptation of Brontë’s classic on TV some years earlier. The idea clearly stuck with Bush, who oddly was known as Cathy as a child, but she didn’t translate it into a song for some time. When she came to record her debut album, The Kick Inside, Bush had around 50 songs to choose from, but “Wuthering Heights” was not among them. She wrote it in “a night and a half” prior to recording the album with a full moon to guide her.
“Wuthering Heights” broke both ground and mold; Bush became the first woman in top the UK charts with a self-penned song, while musically, she broke the conventions of pop music. The single’s success puts a lie to the notion that the lowest common denominator rules for the general listening public.
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I also like Babooshka, Sat in Your Lap, and Experiment IV. What's your favorite Kate Bush song?
