FEATURE:
How Not to Be Invisible
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2005’s Aerial/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
Ranking Kate Bush’s Album Covers
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NOT too many fans and journalists…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
have done a feature about Kate Bush’s album covers (here is one feature that ranks the covers). I am going to explore her covers more in future features. I want to keep things simple today and rank the album covers. I am including her ten studio albums, in addition to the 1986 greatest hits collection, The Whole Story (as its thirty-fifth anniversary is coming up later in the year). In each case, I will list the release date of the albums, a few details about them and my favourite songs from the album. I will also include the album in full. It is hard deciding between them, as Kate Bush’s album covers are all different, striking and memorable! Many artists do not expend too much thought with regards their covers. In Bush’s case, one could tell that she was putting time and effort into ensuring that the covers were representative of the album and caught the eye. There are no two of her covers alike, so one always got something different. Everyone will have their own rankings and opinions. Here are my placings of…
KATE Bush’s album covers.
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11. Aerial
Album Details:
“Eighth album by Kate Bush, released by EMI Records on 7 November 2005. It is Bush's first double album, and was released after a twelve year absence from the music industry during which Bush devoted her time to family and the raising of her son, Bertie. The cover features a waveform of a blackbird song superimposed over a glowing photograph.
The album was originally released on a double LP, a double CD and a digital download. The first edition of the CD features 9 tracks on disc 2, later editions - released on the Fish People label - feature one long track entitled 'An endless sky of honey'” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Designers: Kate and Peacock
Release Date: 7th November, 2005
Labels: EMI/Columbia (U.S.)
Five-Song Mix: King of the Mountain/Mrs. Bartolozzi/How to Be Invisible/Prologue/Somewhere in Between
10. 50 Words for Snow
Album Details:
“Tenth album by Kate Bush, released by Fish People on 21 November 2011. The album was written, composed and produced by Kate. It consists of seven songs "set against a backdrop of falling snow".
It may start with a birth but it’s the birth of a snowflake which takes its journey from the clouds to the ground or to this person’s hand. But it’s not really a conceptual piece; it’s more that the songs are loosely held together with this thread of snow. (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)
Actually, this is one of my quickest albums. It took me about a year, which for me is really quick. (South Bank Sky Arts Award, 2012)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Release Date: 21st November, 2011
Label: Fish People
Five-Song Mix: Lake Tahoe/Misty/Wild Man/Snowed in at Wheeler Street/Among Angels
9. The Kick Inside
Album Details:
“'The Kick Inside' is Kate Bush's debut album, released by EMI Records on 17 February 1978. The album was produced by David Gilmour's friend and associate, Andrew Powell and features 13 tracks. The album was recorded between June 1975 and August 1977, with all the songs written and composed by Kate.
At the time of release, the lead single Wuthering Heights had reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart. The second single from the album was The Man With The Child In His Eyes. Further singles from the album were Them Heavy People (released in Japan), Moving (released in Japan) and Strange Phenomena (released in Brazil).
As part of her preparation for entering the studio, Bush toured pubs with the KT Bush Band, supported by her brother Paddy and close friends. However, 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 Bush was the only member of the KT Bush Band to play on 'The Kick Inside'.
There are thirteen tracks on this album. When we were getting it together, one of the most important things that was on all our mind was, that because there were so many, we wanted to try and get as much variation as we could. To a certain extent, the actual songs allowed this because of the tempo changes, but there were certain songs that had to have a funky rhythm and there were others that had to be very subtle. I was very greatly helped by my producer and arranger Andrew Powell, who really is quite incredible at tuning in to my songs. We made sure that there was one of the tracks, just me and the piano, to, again, give the variation. We've got a rock 'n' roll number in there, which again was important. And all the others there are just really the moods of the songs set with instruments, which for me is the most important thing, because you can so often get a beautiful song, but the arrangements can completely spoil it - they have to really work together. (Self Portrait, 1978)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Photographer: Jay Myrdal
Release Date: 17th February, 1978
Labels: EMI (U.K.)/Harvest (U.S.)
Five-Song Mix: Moving/Strange Phenomena/The Man with the Child in His Eyes/Wuthering Heights/Them Heavy People
8. Director’s Cut
Album Details:
“Ninth album by Kate Bush, released by Fish People on 16 May 2011. The album was written, composed and produced by Kate. It is made up of songs from her earlier albums The Sensual World and The Red Shoes which have been remixed and restructured, three of which were re-recorded completely. All the lead vocals on the album and some of the backing vocals have been entirely re-recorded, with some of the songs transposed to a lower key to accommodate Bush's matured voice. Additionally, the drum tracks have been reconceived and re-recorded.
For some time I have felt that I wanted to revisit tracks from these two albums and that they could benefit from having new life breathed into them. Lots of work had gone into the two original albums and now these songs have another layer of work woven into their fabric. I think of this as a new album. (Sean Michaels, 'Kate Bush reveals guest lyricist on new album - James Joyce'. The Guardian (UK), 5 April 2011. Retrieved 31 January 2015)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Release Date: 16th May, 2011
Labels: Fish People/EMI
Five-Song Mix: Flower of the Mountain/Lily/This Woman’s Work/Moments of Pleasure/Top of the City
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/director-s-cut-23cb82bf-539f-4cfd-a97b-a846f8e0dbdf
7. The Red Shoes
Album Details:
“The album was written, composed and produced by Kate.
The album was inspired by the 1948 film of the same name by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film in turn was inspired by the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen. It concerns a dancer, possessed by her art, who cannot take off the eponymous shoes and find peace. Bush had suggested she would tour for the album and deliberately aimed for a "live band" feel, with less of the studio trickery that had typified her last three albums (which would be difficult to recreate on stage). However, the tour never happened in the end. A few months after the release of the album, Bush did release The Line, The Cross and the Curve, a movie incorporating six tracks from the album”
I've been very affected by these last two years. They've been incredibly intense years for me. Maybe not on a work level, but a lot has happened to me. I feel I've learnt a lot – and, yes, I think [my next album] is going to be quite different… I hope the people that are waiting for it feel it's worth the wait. (BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 December 1991)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Photographer: John Carder Bush
Release Date: 1st November, 1993
Label: EMI
Five-Song Mix: Rubberband Girl/And So Is Love/Moments of Pleasure/Lily/The Red Shoes
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-red-shoes-16411857-1cc8-46c6-ac8a-f23d830d313e
6. The Sensual World
Album Details:
“Sixth album by Kate Bush, released by EMI Records on 16 October 1989. The album was written, composed and produced by Kate.
As with Hounds of Love, the album was recorded mainly in Kate's home studio, after it was upgraded, adding an SSL console. Kate said she felt "overwhelmed by the amount of equipment around me. It was quite stifling, and I made a conscious effort to move away from that, and treat the song as the song."
Del Palmer was her principal engineer, and they often worked together on the new album, with Haydn Bertall appearing now and again. Three tracks on the album feature backing vocals by the Trio Bulgarka. The title track was inspired by James Joyce's book Ulysses, specifically the closing passage of the novel by Molly Bloom. When the estate refused the use of that text, Kate wrote her own which echos the original passage, but adds a dimension: 'Stepping out of the page / into the sensual world'.
I think this album for me, unlike the last album, say, Hounds of Love, where I saw that as two sides - one side being conceptual - this album is very much like short stories for me. Ten short stories that are just saying something different in each one and it was a bit like trying to paint the pictures accordingly. Each song has a different personality and so they each a need little bit of something here, a little bit of that there - just like people, you know, some people you can't walk up to because you know they're a bit edgy first thing in the morning. So you have to come up sideways to them, you know, and it's kind of like how the songs are too. They have their own little personalities, and if it doesn't want you to do it, it won't let you. (The VH-1 interview, January 1990)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Photographer: John Carder Bush
Release Date: 16th October, 1989
Labels: EMI/Columbia (U.S.)
Five-Song Mix: The Sensual World/The Fog/Deeper Understanding/Never Be Mine/This Woman’s Work
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-sensual-world-e4747d6f-f1a1-4c91-bc7d-c5562cef6288
5. Lionheart
Album Details:
“Maybe I'm a bit too close to it at the moment, but I find it much more adventurous than the last one. I'm much more happier with the songs and the arrangements and the backing tracks. I was getting a bit worried about labels from that last album; everything being in the high register, everything being soft, and airy-fairy. That was great for the time but it's not really what I want to do now, or what I want to do, say, in the next year. I guess I want to get basically heavier in the sound sense... and I think that's on the way, which makes me really happy.
I don't really think there are any songs on the album that are as close to Wuthering Heights as there were on the last one. I mean, there's lots of songs people could draw comparisons with. I want the first single that comes out from this album to be reasonably up-tempo. That's the first thing I'm concerned with, because I want to break away from what has previously gone. I'm not pleased with being associated with such soft, romantic vibes, not for the first single anyway. If that happens again, that's what I will be to everyone. (Harry Doherty, Kate: Enigma Variations. Melody Maker, November 1978)
[Recording in France] was an amazing experience. I mean it's the first time I've ever recorded out of the country. And the environment was really quite phenomenal, I mean it was just so beautiful, it was so unlike anything I'd seen for a long while. And I think there was so many advantages to it, but there were a couple of disadvantages - the fact that it was so beautiful, you couldn't help but keep drifting off to the sun out there, you know, that sort of thing. But you just didn't feel like you needed a break, because the vibes and the weather and everyone around was just so good, you know, you didn't feel like you were working. It was really, really fun. (Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Photographer: Gered Mankowitz
Release Date: 13th November, 1978
Labels: EMI (U.K.)EMI America (U.S.)/Harvest (Canada)
Five-Song Mix: Symphony in Blue/Wow/Oh England My Lionheart/In the Warm Room/Kashka from Baghdad
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/lionheart-60077c9a-5fb5-4714-821a-280d80024a96
4. Hounds of Love
Album Details:
“Fifth album by Kate Bush, released by EMI Records on 16 September 1985. Two years in the making, the album was written, composed and produced by Kate.
Following the disappointing performance of her fourth album The Dreaming and its singles, executives at Bush's label were concerned about sales largely due to the long time period it took to produce the album. In the summer of 1983 Bush built her own 48-track studio in the barn behind her family home which she could use to her advantage and at anytime she liked, without time constraints she had to deal with when hiring studios elsewhere.
With the studio more or less completed, Bush began recording demos for the album in the summer of 1983. After five months, Bush began overdubbing and mixing the album in a process that took a full year. The recording sessions included use of the Fairlight CMI synthesiser, piano, traditional Irish instruments, and layered vocals.
The title comes from one of the songs, which is entitled 'Hounds Of Love', and this album for me is like two quite separate pieces of work: the a-side and the b-side. The a-side is very much five individual songs that are in some way all linked by love as a theme, and this seemed to be a title which really did sum up that side. We actually gave a title to the b-side of the album as well, but because you can't have two titles for an album, so we just went for the a-side title to cover it all. (Tony Myatt interview, November 1985)
It's almost like two separate albums for me, this really, in that the first side is five separate songs, if they're linked it's only be the theme of love - they're all forms of love songs, they're about relationships. They're all very different subject matters from each other. And the second side of the album is a conceptual piece which is seven songs all linked together. And it's very much something that was designed and written to work as one piece of music. (Rockline (France), September 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Photographer: John Carder Bush
Release Date: 16th September, 1985
Label: EMI
Five-Song Mix: Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)/Hounds of Love/The Big Sky/And Dream of Sheep/Waking the Witch
3. Never for Ever
Album Details:
“Each song has a very different personality, and so much of the production was allowing the songs to speak with their own voices - not for them to be used purely as objects to decorate with "buttons and bows". Choosing sounds is so like trying to be psychic, seeing into the future, looking in the "crystal ball of arrangements", "scattering a little bit of stardust", to quote the immortal words of the Troggs. Every time a musical vision comes true, it's like having my feet tickled. When it works, it helps me to feel a bit braver. Of course, it doesn't always work, but experiments and ideas in a studio are never wasted; they will always find a place sometime.
I never really felt like a producer, I just felt closer to my loves - felt good, free, although a little raw, and sometimes paranoia would pop up. But when working with emotion, which is what music is, really, it can be so unpredictable - the human element, that fire. But all my friends, the Jons, and now you will make all the pieces of the Never For Ever jigsaw slot together, and It will be born and It will begin Breathing. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)
It's difficult to talk about the album without you actually hearing it, I suppose it's more like the first album, The Kick Inside, though, than the second, Lionheart, in that the songs are telling stories. I like to see things with a positive direction, because it makes it so much easier to communicate with the audience of listener. When you see people actually listening to the songs and getting into them, it makes you realise how important it is that they should actually be saying something. (...)
There are a lot of different songs. There's no specific theme, but they're saying a lot about freedom, which is very important to me. (Deanne Pearson, The Me Inside. Smash Hits (UK), May 1980)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Designer: Nick Price
Release Date: 7th September, 1980
Labels: EMI (U.K.)/EMI America (U.S.)/Harvest (Canada)
Five-Song Mix: Babooshka/All We Ever Look For/The Wedding List/Army Dreamers/Breathing
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/never-for-ever-0e80c456-fc19-41c7-85b8-6574e9091658
2. The Whole Story
Album Details:
“Compilation album by Kate Bush, released by EMI Records on 10 November 1986. The album included 10 hit singles, plus a "new vocal" version of debut hit Wuthering Heights and one new track, Experiment IV.
Yes, I was [against the release of a compilation album] at first. I was concerned that it would be like a "K-tel" record, a cheapo-compo with little thought behind it. It was the record company's decision, and I didn't mind as long as it was well put together. We put a lot of work into the packaging, trying to make it look tasteful, and carefully thought out the running order. And the response has been phenomenal - I'm amazed! (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 22, December 1987)
It wasn't chronological because we wanted to have a running time that was equal on both sides, otherwise you get a bad pressing. In America, where I'm not very well known, they didn't realise it was a compilation! ('Love, Trust and Hitler'. Tracks (UK), November 1989)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Photographer: John Carder Bush
Release Date: 10th November, 1986
Label: EMI
Five-Song Mix: Cloudbusting/Wow/Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)/Experiment IV/Babooshka
Buy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whole-Story-VINYL-LP/dp/B000092J6G
1. The Dreaming
Album Details:
“The thing about all my album titles is that they're usually one of the last things to be thought of because it's so difficult just to find a few words to sum the whole thing up. I've got this book which is all about Aborigines and Australian art and it's called The Dreaming. The song was originally called "Dreamtime", but when we found out that the other word for it was "The Dreaming" it was so beautiful - just by putting "the" in front of "dreaming" made something very different - and so I used that. It also seems to sum up a lot of the songs because one of the main points about that time for the Aborigines was that it was very religious and humans and animals were very closely connected. Humans were actually living in animal's bodies and that's an idea which I particularly like playing with. (Paul Simper, 'Dreamtime Is Over'. Melody Maker (UK), 16 October 1982)
I think [The Dreaming] is about trying to cope...to get through all the shit. I think it was positive: showing how certain people approach all these negative things - war, crime, etc. I don't think I'm actually an aggressive person, but I can be. But I release that energy in work. I think it's wrong to get angry. If people get angry, it kind of freaks everybody out and they can't concentrate on what they're doing. (Jane Solanas, 'The Barmy Dreamer'. NME (UK), 1983)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia
Cover Photographer: John Carder Bush
Release Date: 1st September, 1982
Labels: EMI (U.K.)/EMI America (U.S. and Canada)
Five-Song Mix: Sat in Your Lap/Leave It Open/All the Love/Houdini/Get Out of My House
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-dreaming-03e10ee0-e2d3-4b54-948e-0afcb7e7c290