FEATURE:
Fruit Underneath My Red Shoes
Kate Bush’s Eat the Music
___________
HERE is a song I have sort of looked at before…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for Eat the Music in 1993
but not really gone into any depth. When I discussed the 1993 Kate Bush film, The Line, the Cross, the Curve, I did mention Eat the Music and how brilliant its visuals are. The Red Shoes remains a very underrated album; there are wonderful songs like Eat the Music that do not get that much focus. I hardly hear it played on the radio – that is a shame when you consider its quality. From the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, one can learn more about Eat the Music:
“Song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released as the lead single for The Red Shoes in the USA on September 7, 1993, while everywhere else in the world Rubberband Girl was released. In the UK, a small handful of extremely rare 7" and promotional CD-singles were produced, but were recalled by EMI Records at the last minute. A commercial release followed in the Summer of 1994 in the Netherlands and Australia, along with a handful of other countries. The song's lyrics are about opening up in relationships to reveal who we really are inside”.
With some great bass work from John Giblin, some top valiha work from Justin Vali and Paddy Bush, and some fantastic brass injected into the song, I love how exotic and exciting Eat the Music is. The third track on The Red Shoes – after Rubberband Girl, and And So Is Love -, we got so much variation and life. Rubberband Girl opens The Red Shoes with panache; there is something more emotive with And So Is Love, before Eat the Music gives us some groove and carnival. It is a Baila (a form of music, popular in Sri Lanka and among Goan Catholics) song that sits between two softer tracks on the album – Moments of Pleasure follows Eat the Music.
Some reviewers were not keen to hear Eat the Music when it came out, as they felt Bush made a bit of a mess with the food metaphors; the imagery was a little clumsy and basic. I like lines line “Does he conceal/What he really feels?/He's a woman at heart/And I love him for that/Let's split him open” and “Like a pomegranate/Insides out/All is revealed/Not only women bleed”. We definitely get a lot of fruits thrown into the mix (blender?). Mixing emotional and romantic imagery with fruit imagery, it is a really interesting song. I must admit that I am not sold on every line, but one cannot help but get caught up in the beautiful sound of the track! The video is bright, colourful and joyful…and I think The Red Shoes is one of Kate Bush’s most interesting periods. Whilst the album is not one of her finest, she was still very experimental - and we get these wonderful songs like Eat the Music. I definitely think that it is worthy of some fresh ears and inspection. My favourite lines might be “Take a papaya/You like a guava?/Grab a banana/And a sultana/Rip them to pieces/with sticky fingers/Split the banana”. Even though Eat the Music only reached ten in the US Alternative Airplay (Billboard) chart, I think it is a great song that could have fared well in the U.K. Rubberband Girl was released here instead.
In an interview with Future Music in 1993, Bush went track-by-track on The Red Shoes and talked about Eat the Music:
“This track, laden with trummpets andl light percussion, has a very Latin American feel which actually stems from the music of Madagascar. "It uses a small guitar called a 'caboss' which is one of the instruments Paddy (Bush, Kate's brother) discovered and brought back with him. He's very into ethnic music of all kinds and has always contributed a lot of ideas to the albums - he helped bring in some authentic players and the track started off with bass guitar which was then replaced by an acoustic bass - but that sounded a bit too Latin. The horn section's real, of course."
The decision not to release this track as the first single from the album represents one of the few times Kate has been influenced by outside opinions in this respect -the interest in Rubberband Girl winning out in this case”.
Although there are stronger songs on The Red Shoes, Eat the Music is a treat that offers a lot of delight and vivid imagery. I want to leave with another incredible passage from the song: “All emotion/And with devotion/You put your hands in/What ya thinking?/What am I singing?/A song of seeds/The food of love/Eat the music”. If you have not heard Eat the Music or have sort of avoided The Red Shoes, give the song a good listen (also make sure you watch the video). Bush would come back after 1993 with 2005’s Aerial: an album where she seemed renewed and re-inspired. If The Red Shoes was a slight dip in quality and consistency, one could definitely still find gems. Eat the Music proved that Kate Bush was still delivering unique, unusual and simply…
ALBUM PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
BEAUTIFUL songs.