Kate Bush

: This article is about the singer/songwriter. Kate Bush is also a character in the Japanese anime television series, Victory Gundam.

The Studio Albums

The Kick Inside

The Kick Inside was Kate's debut album, released when she was 19 years old; she had written some of the songs when she was only 15. The album opens with whale song which leads into the first track, "Moving". The album contains Kate's biggest hit to date, "Wuthering Heights", which went to number one in the U.K., Australia, and elsewhere and a Top 10 hit in many other territories.

Related Topics:
The Kick Inside - Whale song - U.K. - Australia

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Kate's work would mature and develop but The Kick Inside remains a startlingly precocious debut and many of her trademark qualities were already firmly in place. Her cinematic and literary influences were most obvious in "Wuthering Heights". The song wasn't initially inspired by Emily Bront%C3%AB's novel, but by a film or tv adaptation (Kate has never specifically identified which version it was) of the book, although she did read the novel later to, in her own words, 'get the research right'. She namechecks Gurdjieff in "Them Heavy People," while the title song is based on the ballad of Lizzie Wan, the story of a girl who kills herself after being impregnanated by her brother. The album is also very open about sexual matters, particularly on the erotic "Feel It" and "L'Amour Looks Like You" and the male musicians later admitted to being embarrassed by the honesty of some of the lyrics.

Related Topics:
Emily Bront%C3%AB - Gurdjieff

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As part of her preparation for entering the studio, Kate had toured pubs with the KT Bush Band, supported by her brother Paddy and close friends, but for the album she was persuaded to use established session musicians, some of whom she would retain even after she had brought her bandmates back on board. Paddy was the only member of the KT Bush Band to play on The Kick Inside. Unlike on later albums where he would play more exotic instruments such as Balalaika and Didgeridoo, here he played the more standard Harmonica and Mandolin. Stuart Elliot played some of the drums and would become her main percussionist on subsequent albums.

Related Topics:
Balalaika - Didgeridoo - Harmonica - Mandolin - Drums - Percussionist

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The album was produced by Kate's mentor David Gilmour and Andrew Powell.

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The Kick Inside is Kate's only album to have a different cover in the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Japan.

Related Topics:
U.K. - U.S. - Canada - Japan

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Lionheart

Lionheart was quickly made after the initial success of The Kick Inside. While it has its share of hits, most notably "Wow", it did not receive the same reception as Kate's first album, reaching only number six in the U.K. album charts.

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Literary references include J. M. Barrie's classic novel in In Search of Peter Pan, as well as a nod towards Arsenic and Old Lace in the song "Coffee Homeground" (which pretty much has the same plot as the play). Film references include "Hammer Horror", inspired by the Hammer Film studio, known for their gothic horror films.

Related Topics:
J. M. Barrie - Arsenic and Old Lace - Hammer Film studio - Gothic - Horror

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Kate's brother Paddy plays many more instruments on this album, including pan flute and Mandocello. Making his first appearance is Del Palmer, who would subsequently become Kate's regular bass player.

Related Topics:
Pan flute - Mandocello - Bass

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Lionheart was produced by Andrew Powell, assisted for the first time by Kate,

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Never For Ever

Never for Ever saw Kate's first foray into production, aided by the engineer of her first two albums, Jon Kelly. Andrew Powell's production of the first two albums had resulted in a definite sound which was evident in every track, with lush orchestral arrangements supporting the live band sound. The range of styles on Never for Ever is much more diverse, veering from the straightforward rocker, "The Wedding List", to the sad, wistful waltz of hit single, "Army Dreamers".

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Kate Bush, for the first time in her career, watched her album rise to number one on the British album charts. At the same time, she became the first woman in history to have an album ranked so high in the UK.

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Bush's literary and cinematic influences were at work once more. "The Infant Kiss" was inspired by the 1961 film The Innocents, starring Deborah Kerr and Michael Redgrave, which in turn had been inspired by The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, while "The Wedding List" drew from François Truffaut's 1968 film La Mariée était En Noir.

Related Topics:
The Innocents - Deborah Kerr - Michael Redgrave - The Turn of the Screw - Henry James - François Truffaut - La Mariée était En Noir

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Never for Ever is, to date, the only album by Kate Bush not to share a title with one of its own tracks (Lionheart is a truncated version of "Oh, England, My Lionheart").

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The Dreaming

The Dreaming was the first album Bush produced herself. With her newfound freedom, Kate Bush experimented with production techniques creating an album that features a very diverse blend of musical styles.

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The Dreaming met with a mixed critical reception at first. Many were baffled by the dense soundscapes she had created. The album was not considered to be a financial success, although it still reached number three in the album charts, and with the exception of the first track to be released, "Sat In Your Lap", which predated the album by several months, the singles taken from it flopped. Over time, however, many music fans have come to regard it as a masterpiece. More than twenty years after it was made, it is still common to hear people remark that the album sounds fresh, intriguing and like nothing else.

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Kate was only in her early twenties when making the album and tended to look outside herself for sources of inspiration. She drew on old crime films ("There Goes A Tenner"), a documentary about the war in Vietnam ("Pull Out The Pin"), the plight of the Australian Aborigines ("The Dreaming"), the life of Houdini ("Houdini") and Stanley Kubrick's film of Stephen King's novel The Shining ("Get Out Of My House"). There are a few more personal tracks, though: the lead single, "Sat In Your Lap", examines feelings of self-doubt versus burning self-confidence and the search for a balance between the two, while "Leave It Open" speaks of the need to acknowledge and express the darker sides of one's personality. The latter was inspired by the murder of John Lennon ("my door was never locked/Until one day a trigger come cocking")

Related Topics:
War in Vietnam - Australian Aborigines - Houdini - Stanley Kubrick - Stephen King - The Shining - John Lennon

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Hounds of Love

Hounds of Love is no less experimental from a production standpoint. Not only did she produce it herself, but for this album, stung by the huge costs she had run up hiring studio space for The Dreaming, she built a private 48 track studio near her home where she could work at her own pace, unhurried by thoughts of cost. Kate has admitted that this was a very happy period in her life and this is reflected by a newfound maturity and confidence to her lyrics, which were often more personal. She writes about the challenges of communication ("Running Up That Hill"), which musically is one of her masterpieces: a passionate, evocative song. "Hounds of Love" concerns the fear of being overwhelmed by love, while "The Big Sky" deals with the frustration of an artist continually questioned by critics with no understanding of the creative process. There was yet another song with a clear literary source: the hit single "Cloudbusting" was based on A Book Of Dreams by Peter Reich, son of Freudian Marxist Wilhelm Reich.

Related Topics:
Hounds of Love - Running Up That Hill - The Big Sky - Wilhelm Reich

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The album is split into two parts which, on its original vinyl release, formed the two sides of the record. The first side, 'Hounds of Love', features the four singles, "Running Up That Hill", "Hounds of Love", "The Big Sky" and "Cloudbusting" as well as "Mother Stands For Comfort", a darkly haunting track about a murderer who seeks refuge with their mother, knowing she will always protect them, come what may. The second side is entitled 'The Ninth Wave', whose title is taken from a poem by Tennyson although the suite of songs it describes have no real connection to his verse. They tell of a woman who is lost at sea, facing death by drowning, and the tortured night she spends in the water.

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The Sensual World

The increasingly personal tone of her writing continued on The Sensual World, with songs about unrequited love ("Love And Anger", "Never Be Mine"), the pressures on modern relationships ("Between A Man And A Woman"), and self-doubt ("The Fog"). "Deeper Understanding" showed a remarkable prescience in its portrait of a lonely person who finds solace in the company of a computer. "Rocket's Tail" (dedicated to her pet cat, Rocket) invoked the joys of indulging in another's fantasy. The quirkiest track on the album, touched by Kate's trademark black humour, was "Heads We're Dancing", about a woman who dances all night with a charming stranger only to find out that he is Adolf Hitler. The title track drew its inspiration from Ulysses by James Joyce. Kate realised that the closing passage of the novel, a monologue by Molly Bloom, fitted the music she had created. When the Joyce estate refused to release the text, Kate wrote original lyrics that echo the original passage, as Molly steps from the pages of the book and revels in the real world. Bush also alluded to Jerusalem by William Blake in a cheeky reference to the song's gestation ("And my arrows of desire rewrite the speech"). The Sensual World went on to become her biggest-selling album in the US, receiving a Gold award for 500,000 copies sold, four years after its release.

Related Topics:
The Sensual World - Adolf Hitler - Ulysses - James Joyce - Jerusalem - William Blake

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The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes takes its title from the film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; the story of the film, and the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen which in turn inspired it, concerns a dancer possessed by her art who cannot shake off the eponymous shoes and find peace.

Related Topics:
The Red Shoes - Michael Powell - Emeric Pressburger - Hans Christian Andersen

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The musical style was far more simple and direct than on any album since Never For Ever. The initial plan had been to take the songs out on the road and so Bush deliberately aimed for a live band feel, with less of the studio trickery that had typified her last three albums and which would be difficult to recreate on stage. The result alienated some of her fan base who enjoyed the intricacy of her later compositions, but others found a new complexity in the lyrics and the emotions they expressed. Gone were the stories and character pieces of her earlier work to be replaced by a set of songs that are almost like a diary. This was a troubled time for Bush. She had suffered a series of bereavements, including the loss of her favoured guitarist, Alan Murphy, and, most painfully, her mother, Hannah. Many of the people she lost are honoured on the ballad, "Moments Of Pleasure". Her long-term relationship with Del Palmer had also broken down, although the pair continued to work together and many of the songs on the album are about the break-up, most searingly "You're The One". Despite the fact that Kate's pain and grief are obvious throughout the album, her trademark sense of humour was still in place, notably on the quirky disco-shanty "Constellation Of The Heart" and the lead single "Rubberband Girl"; comedian Lenny Henry even provided guest vocals on "Why Should I Love You?", a track that featured significant contributions from Prince.

Related Topics:
Alan Murphy - Del Palmer - Lenny Henry - Prince

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Aerial

Kate Bush's eighth studio album, Aerial, will be a two-disc set to be released in November 2005. The first single from the album is "King of the Mountain". The song makes references to Elvis - presumably Elvis Presley - and the film Citizen Kane. Fans have already started analysing the lyrical contents. The track was played for the first time on BBC Radio 2 on 21st September 2005, and was made available for download as of 27 September.

Related Topics:
Aerial - 2005 - King of the Mountain - Elvis Presley - Citizen Kane - BBC Radio 2 - 21st September - 27 September

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