FEATURE: Inside the Other Sides: Ten Brilliant Kate Bush B-Sides

FEATURE:

Inside the Other Sides

Ten Brilliant Kate Bush B-Sides

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I guess the idea of a B-side…

is obsolete when we have streaming. I think some artists put out B-sides when they release stuff to vinyl but, as most are just putting out albums and singles on streaming sites, the concept has sort of faded out. I used to love buying singles, as you usually got a remix of that track and at least one B-side. If some artists’ B-sides were a bit boring or didn’t warrant much focus, I think that Kate Bush is someone who would pop out some really interesting B-sides. There are some where you wonder why they were not released as singles themselves. As Kate Bush’s The Other Sides was released on 8th March, 2019, I wanted to mark two years of that album. I would urge people to buy it, as it is a terrific release. I am not sure if one can buy a vinyl copy of this album. You can get the vinyl as part of the Remastered in Vinyl IV set, but I am not sure whether you can get it standalone. As Classic Pop wrote in their review from 2019, The Other Sides is worth getting:

“After the fanfare of the reissue of two CD and four vinyl Kate Bush Remastered boxsets last November, as well as separate remastered versions of every album, Kate Bush now releases The Other Sides B-sides and rarities compilation as a 4CD set.

This material was already available within the Kate Bush Remastered CD Box 2, which may trigger a few grumbles from completists who bought that pricey set purely to obtain it. Yet more casual Bush fans will find plenty here to treasure.

The first CD offers 12″ remixes of Bush hymns such as Running Up That Hill, The Big Sky and Hounds Of Love, but it’s the two CDs of non-chronological B-sides that inevitably intrigue. She has always been about quality control, but it’s hard to believe that these gems were mere flip-sides.

You Want Alchemy, the B-side to 1994’s The Red Shoes, is a breathy reverie, a delirious exhalation of joy. Under The Ivy, which backed Running Up That Hill, is a fragile piano-led meditation. Cloudbusting B-side Burning Bridge is a fever dream lifted by choral voices.

Verging on the twee, 1993’s Home For Christmas is a shoo-in for an anaemic cover on the next Yuletide John Lewis advert, should their evil marketing bods catch wind of it. It’s a rare Bush misstep: far more typical is Passing Through Air, a crystalline meditation that was the flip to Army Dreamers.

The final CD gathers covers: a husky sigh through Elton John’s Rocket Man, a charged murmur of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing, plus folky ruminations (always her first love) and Irish airs and rebel songs. Bush can even make Elton’s much-mocked Candle In The Wind sound poetic and profound rather than the sentimental hogwash it truly is: she simply inhabits the song, as she inhabits all that she sings. Tremendous”.

I wanted to highlight ten fantastic Kate Bush B-sides. Many of her B-sides are not available on streaming services and, as they hold so much intrigue and power, I wonder whether they will be made available (one can listen to some selections from The Other Sides on Spotify, but there are only nine tracks in total; you can get the tracks on YouTube). To nod to Kate Bush and her ability to create these unique and arresting B-sides, I have put together her ten best…

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