FEATURE:
In Order of Greatness
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush’s Studio Albums Ranked
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BECAUSE a new book…
Kate Bush On Track: Every Album, Every Song (On Track) by Bill Thomas is out at the end of the month and it takes us through Kate Bush’s catalogue, I wanted to do a few features around that theme. I have not ordered and ranked her albums before – many others have. Everyone has their own opinions as to which Bush albums should be in the top five and, whilst I have done similar features before, I have not investigated her ten studio albums and decided which is the finest – and the ones that are great but not as strong as her classic albums. For each album, I have provided a link where you can buy it, the tracks that are highlights, where one can stream the album - in addition to each album’s standout track. Here are Bush’s albums ranked and, in reading it, see if you agree with…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
MY decisions.
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Ten: Director’s Cut
Why Number-Ten?
Whilst it is great that Kate Bush revisited songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes for this 2011 release, few of the reworkings hold the same magic and power as the originals. I like the album a lot, although I think it is an inessential addition to her catalogue – probably one for diehards rather than casual fans. That said, there are some new versions of older songs that are stronger than the previous versions (including Top of the City from The Red Shoes).
Release Date: 16th May, 2011
Labels: Fish People/EMI
Producer: Kate Bush
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/director-s-cut-23cb82bf-539f-4cfd-a97b-a846f8e0dbdf
Standout Tracks: This Woman’s Work/Moments of Pleasure/Top of the City
Review:
“During her early career, Kate Bush released albums regularly despite her reputation as a perfectionist in the studio. Her first five were released within seven years. After The Hounds of Love in 1985, however, the breaks between got longer: The Sensual World appeared in 1989 and The Red Shoes in 1993. Then, nothing before Aerial, a double album issued in 2005. It's taken six more years to get The Director's Cut, an album whose material isn't new, though its presentation is. Four of this set's 11 tracks first appeared on The Sensual World, while the other seven come from The Red Shoes. Bush's reasons for re-recording these songs is a mystery. She does have her own world-class recording studio, and given the sounds here, she's kept up with technology. Some of these songs are merely tweaked, and pleasantly so, while others are radically altered. The two most glaring examples are "Flower of the Mountain" (previously known as "The Sensual World") and "This Woman's Work." The former intended to use Molly Bloom's soliloquy from James Joyce's novel Ulysses as its lyric; Bush was refused permission by his estate. That decision was eventually reversed; hence she re-recorded the originally intended lyrics. And while the arrangement is similar, there are added layers of synth and percussion. Her voice is absent the wails and hiccupy gasps of her youthful incarnation. These have been replaced by somewhat huskier, even more luxuriant and elegant tones. On the latter song, the arrangement of a full band and Michael Nyman's strings are replaced by a sparse, reverbed electric piano which pans between speakers. This skeletal arrangement frames Bush's more prominent vocal which has grown into these lyrics and inhabits them in full: their regrets, disappointments, and heartbreaks with real acceptance. She lets that voice rip on "Lilly," supported by a tougher, punchier bassline, skittering guitar efx, and a hypnotic drum loop. Bush's son Bertie makes an appearance as the voice of the computer (with Auto-Tune) on "Deeper Understanding." On "RubberBand Girl," Bush pays homage to the Rolling Stones' opening riff from "Street Fighting Man" in all its garagey glory (which one suspects was always there and has now been uncovered). The experience of The Director's Cut, encountering all this familiar material in its new dressing, is more than occasionally unsettling, but simultaneously, it is deeply engaging and satisfying” – AllMusic
Key Cut: Flower of the Mountain
Nine: The Red Shoes
Why Number-Nine?
Whilst The Red Shoes is considered to be Bush’s weakest efforts, I don’t agree! I think it is not as consistent and accomplished as many of her other albums, though there are some great cuts to be found – including the elastic single, Rubberband Girl, and the gorgeous Moments of Pleasure. I think the second half of the album suffers from a lack of standout tracks, whilst the production sound is quite edgy (something Bush rectified with Director’s Cut).
Release Date: 1st November, 1993
Label: EMI
Producer: Kate Bush
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-red-shoes-16411857-1cc8-46c6-ac8a-f23d830d313e
Standout Tracks: And So Is Love/Moments of Pleasure/Lily
Review:
“But sometimes, the obviousness of these songs and sentiments can feel too familiar. Bush stacks up plainspoken laments of heartbreak on “And So Is Love,” backed by a ponderous instrumental that only adds to the staleness; the presence of Eric Clapton—one of a number of big-name guitarists who guest on the album—and his scrunch-faced blues licks does not help. Closer “You’re the One” is a better breakup song, though similarly and uncharacteristically rote. It’s fun to hear the fanciful teller of tales attempt kiss-off lines like “I’m going to stay with my friend/Mmm, yes, he’s very good-looking,” but the song’s near-six-minute runtime, superfluous implementation of the Bulgarian vocal group Trio Bulgarka (who were used to much better effect on her previous album, 1989’s The Sensual World), and unnecessary guitar riffage, this time from Jeff Beck, turn it into a tepid slog.
There’s a grab-bag quality to the album, one that runs contrary to the more conceptual flourishes that show up on some of Bush’s most beloved work, like 1985’s Hounds of Love. This looser, more scattershot method doesn’t totally suit her. She admits as much on the record’s opening track, “Rubberband Girl,” a brash trifle where she longs to be as flexible as a tree, to be able to bounce around and bounce back. And the album’s strangest track, “Big Stripey Lie,” is an angsty, tuneless wreck that sounds like Bush trying—and failing—to take on the industrial and grunge sounds of the early ’90s. The song marked the first time Bush ever played guitar on an album; tellingly, to this day, it’s also the last time she ever played guitar on an album. Elsewhere, there are African rhythms, Celtic stomps, and even some bulbous funk. Before the album’s release, Bush said that The Red Shoes’ more freewheeling approach was meant to coincide with a subsequent live tour, which would have been her first since 1979. The shows never happened” – Pitchfork
Key Cut: Rubberband Girl
Eight: The Sensual World
Why Number-Eight?
Many might buckle at the low placing of one of Kate Bush’s most-loved albums! This is personal opinion but, whilst I really love The Sensual World, it is not an album that has captured me as much as others. There are a couple of tracks on the album that I am not completely invested in, but there is also some of Bush’s greatest work to be discovered on The Sensual World. From the title track, to the prescient and physic Deeper Understand (a song about the grip of technology was released on a 1989 album!), to the stunning This Woman’s Work, it is a remarkable album!
Release Date: 17th October, 1989
Label: EMI
Producer: Kate Bush
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-sensual-world-e4747d6f-f1a1-4c91-bc7d-c5562cef6288
Standout Tracks: The Sensual World/Love and Anger/Deeper Understanding
Review:
“There’s no Hounds-style grand narrative thread on The Sensual World. Bush likened it to a volume of short stories, with its subjects frequently wrestling with who they were, who they are, and who they want to be. She was able to pour some of her own frustrations into these knotty tussles: She found it more difficult than ever to write songs, couldn’t work out what she wanted them to say, and hit roadblock after roadblock. The 12 months she spent pestering Joyce’s grandson were surpassed by the maddening two years she spent on “Love and Anger,” which, fittingly, finds her tormented by an old trauma she can’t bring herself to talk about. But by the end, she banishes the evil spirits by leading her band in something that sounds like a raucous exorcism, chanting, “Don’t ever think you can’t change the past and the future” over squalling guitars.
Even its most surreal songs are rooted in self-examination. “Heads We’re Dancing” seems like a dark joke—a young girl is charmed on to the dancefloor by a man she later learns is Adolf Hitler—but poses a troubling question: What does it say about you, if you couldn’t see through the devil’s disguise? Its discordant, skronky rhythms make it feel like a formal ball taking place in a fever dream, and Bush’s voice grows increasingly panicky as she realizes how badly she’s been duped. As far-fetched as its premise was, its inspiration lay close to home: A family friend had told Bush how shaken they’d been after they’d taken a shine to a dashing stranger at a dinner party, only to find out they’d been chatting to Robert Oppenheimer” – Pitchfork
Key Cut: This Woman’s Work
Seven: 50 Words for Snow
Why Number-Seven?
Again, this is a hugely-loved album that I have placed lower than others which have not received the same regard. 50 Words for Snow is Bush’s moist-recent album – and it turns ten later this year. Featuring some great collaborations with the likes of Elton John and Stephen Fry, some of her most beautiful and immersive vocals to date, and some career-best songs (Misty is an epic that I keep listening to), it shows that Bush is always evolving and producing amazing music! There are no weak tracks on 50 Words for Snow - but I think there is more urgency and variation on other albums that means I have placed 50 Words for Snow at seven.
Release Date: 21st November, 2011
Label: Fish People
Producer: Kate Bush
Standout Tracks: Snowflake/Wild Man/50 Words for Snow
Review:
“…Equally, Fairweather Low is not the first person called upon to pretend to be someone else on a Bush album, although she usually takes that upon herself, doing impersonations to prove the point: Elvis on Aerial's King of the Mountain, a gorblimey bank robber on There Goes a Tenner. Finally, in song at least, Bush has always displayed a remarkably omnivorous sexual appetite: long before the Yeti and old Snow Balls showed up, her lustful gaze had variously fixed on Adolf Hitler, a baby and Harry Houdini.
No, the really peculiar thing is that 50 Words for Snow is the second album in little over six months from a woman who took six years to make its predecessor and 12 to make the one before that. If it's perhaps stretching it to say you can tell it's been made quickly – no one is ever going to call an album that features Lake Tahoe's operatic duet between a tenor and a counter-tenor a rough-and-ready lo-fi experience – it certainly feels more intuitive than, say, Aerial, on which a lot of time and effort had clearly been expended in the pursuit of effortlessness. For all the subtle beauty of the orchestrations, there's an organic, live feel, the sense of musicians huddled together in a room, not something that's happened on a Bush album before.
That aside, 50 Words for Snow is extraordinary business as usual for Bush, meaning it's packed with the kind of ideas you can't imagine anyone else in rock having. Taking notions that look entirely daft on paper and rendering them into astonishing music is very much Bush's signature move. There's something utterly inscrutable and unknowable about how she does it that has nothing to do with her famous aversion to publicity. Better not to worry, to just listen to an album that, like the weather it celebrates, gets under your skin and into your bones” – The Guardian
Key Cut: Misty
Six: Lionheart
Why Number-Six?
Often put in the bottom-two Kate Bush albums (alongside The Red Shoes), I think Lionheart is a solid and remarkable follow-up to her debut, The Kick Inside. Releasing her second album in 1978 was a hard task and, as such, Bush only wrote three new songs - Symphony in Blue, Fullhouse, and Coffee Homeground. Despite the fact Lionheart is less consistent than The Kick Inside, there are some amazing songs that need to be cherished. From the sumptuous Symphony in Blue, to the amazing Wow, through to the underrated Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake, and Kashka from Baghdad, it is an incredible album! More ambitious and varied than The Kick Inside, I think that Lionheart deserves a retrospective and new acclaim. It is a great album I would advise everyone to check out.
Release Date: 12th November, 1978
Label: EMI
Producer: Andrew Powell (assisted by Kate Bush)
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/lionheart-60077c9a-5fb5-4714-821a-280d80024a96/lp
Standout Tracks: Wow/In the Warm Room/Kashka from Baghdad
Review:
“One of the funny things about The Before Time when you had to buy music to listen to it is that ropey critical reputations could really put you off ever listing to certain records, even by artists you loved. It took me years to get around to Lionheart. And you know, sure, it’s the weakest Kate Bush record but that doesn’t make it bad. If anything the fact it’s routinely dismissed as a rushed follow up to The Kick Inside means it doesn’t have the pressure to compete with the stronger later records. The luminous ‘Wow’ is obviously the best and most memorable song, but seriously, check out those elaborately layered vocals on opener ‘Symphony in Blue’. The songwriting is a bit hazy compared to the laser-definition of later albums, but musically and texturally it’s a really beautiful record - the only Kate Bush album that is content to be pretty and not ask you to commit to it, and there’s something to be said for that, I think. (7)” – Drowned in Sound
Key Cut: Symphony in Blue
Five: Aerial
Why Number-Five?
This was Kate Bush big return after twelve years away. Coming back in 2005 with a superb double album, the influence of motherhood (she gave birth to her son, Bertie, in 1998) and the home is clear. From the more conventional collection of songs on the first album to the conceptual suite, A Sky of Honey, on the second, it is a masterful work from one of the greatest songwriters ever! Apparently, Bush’s favourite album to record, Aerial is a staggering work that grows stronger the more you listen to it. I would definitely recommend people buy the album on vinyl.
Release Date: 7th November, 2005
Labels: EMI/Columbia (U.S.)
Producer: Kate Bush
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/aerial-90730658-35e2-49ab-93d8-9c3e7897c0f4
Standout Tracks: King of the Mountain/How to Be Invisible/Nocturn
Review:
“As might be expected of an album which breaks a 12-year silence during which she began to raise a family, there's a core of contented domesticity to Kate Bush's Aerial. It's not just a case of parental bliss - although her affection for "lovely, lovely Bertie" spills over from the courtly song specifically about him, to wash all over the second of this double-album's discs, a song-cycle about creation, art, the natural world and the cycling passage of time.
It's there too in the childhood reminiscence of "A Coral Room", the almost autistic satisfaction of the obsessive-compulsive mathematician fascinated by "Pi" (which affords the opportunity to hear Bush slowly sing vast chunks of the number in question, several dozen digits long - which rather puts singing the telephone directory into the shade), and particularly "Mrs Bartolozzi", a wife, or maybe widow, seeking solace for her absent mate in the dance of their clothes in the washing machine. "I watched them going round and round/ My blouse wrapping itself round your trousers," she observes, slipping into the infantile - "Slooshy sloshy, slooshy sloshy, get that dirty shirty clean" - and alighting periodically upon the zen stillness of the murmured chorus, "washing machine".
The second disc takes us through a relaxing day's stroll in the sunshine, from the sequenced birdsong of the "Prelude", through a pavement artist's attempt to "find the song of the oil and the brush" through serendipity and skill ("That bit there, it was an accident/ But he's so pleased/ It's the best mistake he could make/ And it's my favourite piece"), through the gentle flamenco chamber-jazz "Sunset" and the Laura Veirs-style epiphanic night-time swim in "Nocturn", to her dawn duet with the waking birds that concludes the album with mesmeric waves of synthesiser perked up by brisk banjo runs.
There's a hypnotic undertow running throughout the album, from the gentle reggae lilt of the single "King of the Mountain" and the organ pulses of "Pi" to the minimalist waves of piano and synth in "Prologue". Though oddly, for all its consistency of mood and tone, Aerial is possibly Bush's most musically diverse album, with individual tracks involving, alongside the usual rock-band line-up, such curiosities as bowed viol and spinet, jazz bass, castanets, rhythmic cooing pigeons, and her bizarre attempt to achieve communion with the natural world by aping the dawn chorus. Despite the muttered commentary of Rolf Harris as The Painter, it's a marvellous, complex work which restores Kate Bush to the artistic stature she last possessed around the time of Hounds of Love” – The Independent
Key Cut: Mrs. Bartolozzi
Four: Never for Ever
Why Number-Four?
I think Never for Ever is Bush’s most-underrated, perhaps, and one that is considered to be a promising stepping stone to what was to come. After a hectic 1978 and 1979 which included two studio albums and the immense show, The Tour of Life, I am surprised that there is so much new life, inspiration and energy in the album! Experimenting more with sound and theme – Bush discovered the Fairlight CMI late into the recording of Never for Ever -, there is not a wasted moment on the album. Masterpieces like Babooshka, Army Dreamers, and Breathing are joined with gems like Delius (Song of Summer), The Wedding List, and The Infant Kiss. Bush co-produced the album with Jon Kelly…and I think that degree of control worked in her favour. Never for Ever is, without doubt, one of Kate Bush’s finest albums.
Release Date: 8th September, 1980
Label: EMI
Producers: Jon Kelly/Kate Bush
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/never-for-ever-0e80c456-fc19-41c7-85b8-6574e9091658
Standout Tracks: All We Ever Look For/The Wedding List/Breathing
Review:
“You listen to all of these records in sequence and good as The Kick Inside is, it’s just very apparent that the songwriting has gone up a gear with Never Forever. Strident, diverse, and intense Never Forever is the last Bush album with batshit mental prog art, the last album with an outside producer (though she co-produced with Jon Kelly), and the last record before she started using her beloved Fairlight synthesiser/sampler. It was also her third album in three years, that preempted the first meaningful gap in her career - you could point at the ways in which it predicts The Dreaming and call it a transitional album, but the truth is Never for Ever feels like the [apotheosis] of Leotard-era Kate Bush. The songs are just dazzlingly strong and distinctive. There are singles: ‘Babooska’ is a lot of fun, and the closing one-two of the eerie ‘Army Dreamers’ and the apocalyptic ‘Breathing’ is remarkable. But there’s a hell of a lot of little-remembered gold amongst the album tracks: the breakneck ‘Violin’ and tongue-in-cheek murder ballad ‘The Wedding List’ are really extraordinarily good pieces of songwriting. (8)” – Drowned in Sound
Key Cut: Babooshka
Three: Hounds of Love
Why Number-Three?
Most people would place Hounds of Love in the number-one spot. It is her most acclaimed album and, when many people think of Bush at her peak, they go to Hounds of Love. Certainty, the concept/suite The Ninth Wave, is possibly the most amazing and moving thing she has ever written. With huge singles like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting, and Hounds of Love making the album’s first half pretty amazing, there is nothing to fault about Hounds of Love. I adore the album beyond words but, with such a strong top-two, Hounds of Love gets the bronze medal!
Release Date: 16th September, 1985
Label: EMI
Producer: Kate Bush
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/hounds-of-love-d3743f1e-51e3-4337-b759-f47b26c0a247
Standout Tracks: Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)/Cloudbusting/Watching You Without Me
Review:
“Kate Bush's strongest album to date also marked her breakthrough into the American charts, and yielded a set of dazzling videos as well as an enviable body of hits, spearheaded by "Running Up That Hill," her biggest single since "Wuthering Heights." Strangely enough, Hounds of Love was no less complicated in its structure, imagery, and extra-musical references (even lifting a line of dialogue from Jacques Tourneur's Curse of the Demon for the intro of the title song) than The Dreaming, which had been roundly criticized for being too ambitious and complex. But Hounds of Love was more carefully crafted as a pop record, and it abounded in memorable melodies and arrangements, the latter reflecting idioms ranging from orchestrated progressive pop to high-wattage traditional folk; and at the center of it all was Bush in the best album-length vocal performance of her career, extending her range and also drawing expressiveness from deep inside of herself, so much so that one almost feels as though he's eavesdropping at moments during "Running Up That Hill." Hounds of Love is actually a two-part album (the two sides of the original LP release being the now-lost natural dividing line), consisting of the suites "Hounds of Love" and "The Ninth Wave." The former is steeped in lyrical and sonic sensuality that tends to wash over the listener, while the latter is about the experiences of birth and rebirth. If this sounds like heady stuff, it could be, but Bush never lets the material get too far from its pop trappings and purpose. In some respects, this was also Bush's first fully realized album, done completely on her own terms, made entirely at her own 48-track home studio, to her schedule and preferences, and delivered whole to EMI as a finished work; that history is important, helping to explain the sheer presence of the album's most striking element -- the spirit of experimentation at every turn, in the little details of the sound. That vastly divergent grasp, from the minutiae of each song to the broad sweeping arc of the two suites, all heavily ornamented with layered instrumentation, makes this record wonderfully overpowering as a piece of pop music. Indeed, this reviewer hadn't had so much fun and such a challenge listening to a new album from the U.K. since Abbey Road, and it's pretty plain that Bush listened to (and learned from) a lot of the Beatles' output in her youth” - AllMusic
Key Cut: The Big Sky
Two: The Dreaming
Why Number-Two?
I would edge The Dreaming above Hounds of Love as I love the fact that this was a big leap and switch from 1980’s Never for Ever. Although I have, until recently, preferred the warmth of Hounds of Love, I have been struck by the bold innovation and incredible intensity of some of The Dreaming’s tracks, balanced against sheer beauty and emotion. Although Bush pushed herself incredibly hard on the album and EMI were not pleased with a relatively poor commercial performance and the time it took to complete, I think The Dreaming is an album that has grown stronger and stronger through time. There is so much variety and impact to be felt on the album. Even though singles like The Dreaming, and There Goes a Tenner did not chart high, non-singles like Leave It Open, Suspended in Gaffa (it was released in continental Europe and Australia but not the U.K.), and Houdini display the full richness and potency of The Dreaming. EMI also were not sure Bush should produce solo again after The Dreaming but, with Hounds of Love, she very much showed why they were wrong!
Release Date: 13th September, 1982
Label: EMI
Producer: Kate Bush
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-dreaming-03e10ee0-e2d3-4b54-948e-0afcb7e7c290
Standout Tracks: Sat in Your Lap/Leave It Open/Get Out of My House
Review:
“On this album Kate’s voices are more manifold than ever before or since. Perhaps this is one of the reasons people find this album hard to penetrate. ‘The Dreaming’ includes most of Kate’s best acting on record. Within each song Kate uses several multi-layered vocal techniques (the voice truly as instrument), sometimes heavily electronically treated, to express different emotional or narrative perspectives, which permit little access to who Kate Bush actually is and create a moment-form effect that’s positively schizophrenic: ‘That girl in the mirror / Between you and me / She don’t stand a chance of / Getting anywhere at all.’
'This house is full of, full of, full of, full of fight'
‘The Dreaming’ is the sound of Kate striking out. Fighting for her own artistic integrity in a sea of pop banalities. The opening track ‘Sat In Your Lap’ steps into the ring with flailing rhythm section punches, establishing Kate’s intention with its Faustian pact lyricism, and uncompromisingly strange instrumentation. She is greedy to push boundaries and gain enlightenment and knowledge by stepping over a threshold of normality into an unfamiliar landscape. Kate uses Fairlight sampling, sound effects galore, spoken voices, traditional and ethnic musics, backwards masking, unusual time-signatures and changes, and all manner of unlikely instrumentation. The more conventional instrumentation is often processed massively. Just when the listener thinks they are in more familiar Bush territory they can be left hanging in mid air (the choirboy sections of ‘All The Love’, the chamber orchestrated bridge in ‘Houdini’) or suddenly swept up by an Irish jig (Night Of The Swallow). If there is one over-riding lyrical impression it is of entrapment, incarceration, restriction and the accompanying yearning to escape and taste independence and freedom. The album cover and its allusion to the song ‘Houdini’ make this explicit. This is the source of the fight and passion in the album, culminating in the final song ‘Get Out Of My House’ which has to be one of the most passionate and intense songs in Bush’s catalogue. This is the sonic approximation of a furious psychic battle, with allusions to sorcery and exorcism. It sounds like she is destroying her voice as she sings most of the lyrics with a barking and spitting delivery, and repeatedly screams the title, then she leads a chorus of braying donkey impersonations by way of a closing gesture. This album may make some listeners laugh as they take its ambition as a gall to their sensibilities, but all great art polarises opinion anyway. And Kate Bush really meant it. Really” – Head Heritage
Key Cut: Houdini
One: The Kick Inside
Why Number-One?
The Kick Inside has always been my favourite album (from any artist). It remains massively underrated. Whilst many suggest Bush improved and hit her peak later in her career, I think she was exceptional and realised right from the start! Although Wuthering Heights is an obvious highlight, the whole album is a masterclass and deeply engaging work that is amazingly assured and original from a teenage talent who released in her debut in 1978 – in a year where The Kick Inside sounded like nothing else around! Everyone will have their views regarding Kate Bush’s best album but, to me, The Kick Inside is her finest work.
Release Date: 17th February, 1978
Label: EMI
Producer: Andrew Powell
Standout Tracks: Moving/The Man with the Child in His Eyes/Them Heavy People
Review:
“And if there is trepidation in the arrangement of “The Man With the Child in His Eyes,” it reflects other people’s anxieties about its depicted relationship with an older man: Will he take advantage, let her down? This is the other teenage recording, her voice a little higher, less powerfully exuberant, but disarmingly confident. Her serene, steady note in the chorus—“Oooooh, he’s here again”—lays waste to the faithless. And whether he is real, and whether he loves her, is immaterial: “I just took a trip on my love for him,” she sings, empowered, again, by her desire. There’s not a fearful note on The Kick Inside, and yet there is still room for childish wonder: Just because Bush appeared emotionally and musically sophisticated beyond her years didn’t mean denying them.
“Kite” unravels like a children’s story: First she wants to fly up high, away from cruel period pains (“Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o”) and teenage self-consciousness (“all these mirror windows”) but no sooner is she up than she wants to return to real life. It is a wacky hormone bomb of a song, prancing along on toybox cod reggae and the enervating rat-a-tat-tat energy that sustained parodies of Bush’s uninhibited style; still, more fool anyone who sneers instead of reveling in the pure, piercing sensation of her crowing “dia-ia-ia-ia-ia-ia-ia-mond!” as if giving every facet its own gleaming syllable.
“Strange Phenomena” is equally awed, Bush celebrating the menstrual cycle as a secret lunar power and wondering what other powers might arrive if we were only attuned to them. She lurches from faux-operatic vocal to reedy shriek, marches confidently in tandem with the strident chorus and unleashes a big, spooky “Woo!,” exactly as silly as a 19-year-old should be. As is “Oh to Be in Love,” a baroque, glittering harpsichord romp about a romance that brightens the colors and defeats time.
She only fails to make a virtue of her naivety on “Room for the Life,” where she scolds a weeping woman for thinking any man would care about her tears. The sweet calypso reverie is elegant, and good relief from the brawnier, propulsive arrangements that stood staunchly alongside Steely Dan. But Bush shifts inconsistently between reminding the woman that she can have babies and insisting, more effectively, that changing one’s life is up to you alone. The latter is clearly where her own sensibilities lie: “Them Heavy People,” another ode to her teachers, has a Woolf-like interiority (“I must work on my mind”) and a distinctly un-Woolf-like exuberance, capering along like a pink elephant on parade. “You don’t need no crystal ball,” she concludes, “Don’t fall for a magic wand/We humans got it all/We perform the miracles.”
The Kick Inside was Bush’s first, the sound of a young woman getting what she wants. Despite her links to the 1970s’ ancien régime, she recognized the potential to pounce on synapses shocked into action by punk, and eschewed its nihilism to begin building something longer lasting. It is ornate music made in austere times, but unlike the pop sybarites to follow in the next decade, flaunting their wealth while Britain crumbled, Bush spun hers not from material trappings but the infinitely renewable resources of intellect and instinct: Her joyous debut measures the fullness of a woman’s life by what’s in her head” – Pitchfork
Key Cut: Wuthering Heights