FEATURE:
Never Be Mine
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake for This Woman’s Work in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Will Kate Bush Be Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021?
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EVERY award ceremony in the music world…
IMAGE CREDIT: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
has been affected this year, and most of them are going to be happening online. This year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction will not take place in the usual manner. The Class of 2020 is very different, and this is what will happen:
“Congratulations to the newest Inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In the Performer Category:
Depeche Mode
The Doobie Brothers
Whitney Houston
Nine Inch Nails
The Notorious B.I.G.
T. Rex
Ahmet Ertegun Award:
Jon Landau
Irving Azoff
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony 2020
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will replace the live 35th annual Induction Ceremony with an exclusive special honoring the class of 2020 Inductees. The program will air on HBO and HBO Max Saturday, November 7, 2020 at 8 p.m. EST.
Ticketmaster purchasers will automatically be issued a refund to their account.
The 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will move to the fall with the 36th Induction Ceremony returning to Cleveland”.
Some people write off the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a remnant of the past or something, since its inception, that has lost its way. It is not only Rock artists who are inducted. From Hip-Hop and Rap through to Folk and many other genres, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has diversified and cast its net wide. I think one reason it is better now than before is because more women are being inducted.
To be fair, there are still too few being inducted, and there are plenty of worthy candidates! This article suggests some worthy women who should be inducted and, to me, one of the most glaring omissions is Kate Bush. I am not sure how much stock she puts into the Hall of Fame and, since her career began, she has won a fair share of awards. She was actually nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 but, that year, the likes of Nina Simone and Bon Jovi were inducted. Each year has a mix of the worthy and baffling being inducted, and I do think that Bush is a worthy inclusion. Some say that she is not that ‘Rock’ and that she is more Art Pop/Pop. I would disagree and draw people to her back catalogue, which includes tracks like Get Out of My House, James and the Cold Gun, Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbreak and many others. Bush has woven together genres and she is one of the most influential artists ever. Considering there are no genre boundaries regarding those who are inducted into the Hall of Fame, I would argue that Bush is more worthy than many who have been inducted in the past few years! It raises questions as to whether women are being overlooked, and if, like so many award shows and corners of music, there is an issue with gender inequality and sexism. I would say so, but one might also argue that Bush never made the impact in America as other artists and, for that reason, she is lesser-known. Fans have made a point that Kate Bush has inspired artists like Madonna (who was inducted in 2008), and she has influenced a generation of artists.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna performs on stage at the Feyenoord stadium on 24th July, 1990 during her Blond Ambition Tour (the head mic she is wearing was first seen/used when Kate Bush performed at her Tour of Life concerts in 1979)/PHOTO CREDIT: Michel Linssen/Redferns
I want to bring in a couple of articles that argue the case for Kate Bush. This is what SPIN said in a feature from last year:
“Kate Bush was nominated for the first time two years ago, after more than a decade of eligibility. And British acts who were bigger at home than in the U.S. tend to have a hard time getting into the America-based Hall of Fame. (All of her albums charted in the top 10 in the UK; she never charted higher than No. 28 on the Billboard 200.) But Bush’s arty, ethereal, and idiosyncratic approach to singing and songwriting has been deeply influential to a couple generations of alternative artists on both sides of the pond, and there seems to be a new hit cover of “Running Up That Hill” every year.
Suggested induction speaker: Lady Gaga, whose chameleonic and unconventional stagecraft has an antecedent in Bush’s theatrical early performances”.
The fact that Björk and Carole King have been overlooked is scandalous! Billboard commented on the nominations for this year’s Hall of Fame, and they remarked on the lack of women included and why Kate Bush should be included in the conversation:
“The lack of gender balance was conspicuous enough that upon being inducted in 2016, Steve Miller (one of the five all-male acts being honored) openly called out the museum's governing body for the disparity, pointedly encouraging them to "keep expanding your vision, to be more inclusive of women.” The 2018 and 2019 classes showed improvement, with Janet Jackson, Nina Simone and Sister Rosetta Tharpe all finally being welcomed in (the latter as an early influence), and StevIe Nicks becoming the first woman to make the Hall twice (first with Fleetwood Mac and then as a solo artist). But this year, Whitney Houston stands as the sole female representative among the Rock Hall's six inductees.
Kate Bush. Like Björk, Kate Bush is an inspirational art-pop maestro for whom the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame feels almost too small to contain, but who nonetheless would almost certainly have been inducted by now if we shipped the Rock Hall across the pond. Her U.S. presence never quite approached her chart-topping impact oversees – “Running Up That Hill” remains her only top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 – but her stateside influence was still considerable; even the late 2Pac, a 2017 inductee, was an avowed listener”.
I think next year’s Hall of Fame really needs to include more women, and I hope that it will be Kate Bush’s year! I don’t stand by this feeling that Kate Bush has been omitted because she is not that known in America. For a start, music is universal, and criteria for entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is broad – one does not need to be American or have sold a certain number of albums in America. It is not the Mercury Prize we are talking about: artists from Britain have been inducted before, and we live in an age where one can access pretty much everything that has been recorded. Kate Bush is very well known in America and, though she did not tour in the country or receive that much attention until Hounds of Love in 1985, millions of Americans know and love her music. She is admired by Big Boi; artists such as St. Vincent and Tori Amos count her as an influence, and there are countless artists in the U.S. who take a guide from Bush and her majesty.
IN THIS PHOTO: Big Boi is among Kate Bush’s whordes of American fans
Maybe, in the 1970s and 1980s, Bush’s music sounded a little weird and inaccessible to an American audience. One cannot say that Bush’s refusal to tour was the reason why she never made it big in the country. U.S. domination was not important to her, but I think the ensuing years have seen Bush gain a lot more traction and enthusiasm in America. Maybe contemporary chart success eluded her, and her lack of physical presence in the country was notable. This NPR article from 2011 lays out some facts, and talks about Bush’s influence:
“What's interesting to me now is not that Bush never had a Top 10 U.S. hit (she did make it into the Top 40 in 1985, with "Running Up That Hill"), but that her influence so strongly pervades today's indie pop. I remember being slightly startled when the Decemberists attempted Bush's "Wuthering Heights" at a Seattle show in 2005 — the kids are doing their homework, I thought!
Since then Bush 101 has proven a popular course. Tori Amos may be the artist still most frequently compared to Bush, and Maxwell gave her the biggest crossover hit a decade ago, with his version of "This Woman's Work." But in 2011, the daughters and sons of Kate are everywhere: Joanna Newsom, Allison Goldfrapp, Julianna Barwick, Lykke Li, Feist, Patrick Wolf, Florence Welch, Ariel Pink, and even Justin Vernon of Bon Iver — what would their voices be, cleaned of her traces?
IN THIS PHOTO: Tori Amos has frequently been compared with Kate Bush
It's old wisdom to say there are two ways to be big In popular music: sell a lot of records (or, now, downloads), or deeply touch the lives of the next generation of outliers. We lovers of Kate Bush can rest assured that she’s done that, more than most of her arty 1980s peers. I may still never get to see her in concert. But I feel her everywhere”.
I have seen others argue that Bush has been ignored by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because Art Pop/Rock is not a big commodity in the U.S. Talking Heads were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002, and I would say they are even more ‘out there’ than Bush! There is no doubt that Bush perfectly marries the accessible with the unique, and her eclectic nature is a massive reason why she remains so enduring and loved. I would sweep aside any arguments and flawed rationalisations why Bush has not been included in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. American notoriety and sales is a lazy argument (just look at her worldwide appeal and popularity); her music is too weird and intangible (look at scores of other inclusions who are just as different as Bush); she is too reclusive (why would a lack of touring and physical present in America even be a factor?!). The deciding factors regarding who is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame should boil down to two considerations: how influential and popular the artist is, and how strong their music is. On both fronts, Bush cannot be ignored!
She has influenced artists around the globe, and I know full well that her music is played all across America. Scores of well-known musicians and figures continue to extoll the multiple virtues of Bush, and her music has been featured in film and T.V. shows – in fact, Andy Samberg wrote to Kate Bush in order to get the permission to use Cloudbusting for his film, Palm Springs. Maybe America was not sure what to make of Bush decades ago, but the advent of social media and streaming platforms has brought her music to millions of new ears, and I think her status in the country has changed. I want to bring in an article I have quoted from a few times in various pieces. In 2018, Margaret Talbot wrote a feature for The New Yorker, where she discussed Bush’s impact on her and why she stands out as a pioneer:
“Female pop geniuses who exercise their gifts in rampant, restless fashion over decades, writing, performing, and producing their own work, are as rare as black opals. Shape-shifting brilliance and an airy indifference to what’s expected of you are not the music industry’s favorite assets in any performer, but they are probably easier to accept in a man than in a woman. And such a musician, even today, is subject to the same pressures that have always hindered women’s artistic expression.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993 during filming of The Line, The Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Like the thwarted writers whom Virginia Woolf described in “A Room of One’s Own,” the female pop original is “strained and her vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that”—by the refusal to please and accommodate that only a deep belief in one’s own gift can counteract. “What genius, what integrity it must have required in the face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society,” Woolf writes, “to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking.”
Kate Bush, the English singer-songwriter, is one of those who have held fast without shrinking, so it is curious and instructive to see how certain cultural signifiers have been trotted out over the years to diminish her. Certainly, she’s had her share of respect and even adoration. Prince, Peter Gabriel, and Elton John collaborated on songs with her, and she has inspired younger talents; Tori Amos, Björk, Joanna Newsom, St. Vincent, Perfume Genius, and Mitski are all heirs. Every year, around the world, people get together by the hundreds to dance in public to Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”—a goofy but heartfelt tribute to her interpretive dance moves in the song’s glorious freak flag of a video. She’s got credit for her pioneering use of the Fairlight synthesizer, in the eighties, and the headset microphone onstage, for producing her own albums, and for evolving an ahead-of-its-time sound that combined heavy bass with the ethereal high notes, swoops, and screeches of her own remarkable voice. She is a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty, and critics have always noticed that.
Not long ago, I was reading another Virginia Woolf essay, about the Brontës, when I came across some lines about Emily that made me think of Bush. It wasn’t only because Bush summoned Emily’s shade in “Wuthering Heights” or, this year, wrote a short poem for her that will be inscribed in stone at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, on the Yorkshire moors. It was because Bush’s identification with Emily Brontë seemed like a key to her own music. Emily, as Bush once described her, was “this young girl in an era when the female role was so inferior and she was coming out with this passionate, heavy stuff.” Bush, like Emily Brontë, rendered femininity as passionate and heavy but also incandescent, allied to the natural world, an irresistible force. “Hers then is the rarest of all powers,” Woolf wrote. “She could free life from its dependence on facts, with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar”.
There are compelling articles that outline why Bush’s snub by the Rock & Roll Hall is glaring and, whilst this honour is not the most important thing, I think she is one of the most deserving artists in terms of what she has achieved and the artists she has affected! It has been forty-two years since Bush made her debut, and nearly thirty-five years since the groundbreaking Hounds of Love was released. She was close to being inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 but, next year, I really feel there are no excuses…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
TO ignore Kate Bush once more.