FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts
the last of this run I will do, there is one more song I want to include in the Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts feature. My favourite album ever is The Kick Inside. People will know that. They may not know all of the tracks on that album. People talk about Wuthering Heights and The Man with the Child in His Eyes. The album turns forty-six in February. I thought I had included this song already. It seems not! Maybe not as obscure as other Kate Bush songs – indeed, other songs on The Kick Inside -, there is something alluring about Feel It that means its streaming numbers are quite impressive. Even if Oh to Be in Love outranks it in that respect, Feel It is a song that has reached a lot of new ears. That comes off of very little radio play. This song is not one that you will hear spun much. It is a shame! It is a beautiful tack from Kate Bush’s debut album. I think that more people need to listen to this song. I am going to get to a feature that dives deeper into Feel It. First, here is a little bit of background:
“Song written by Kate Bush. Three voice and piano tracks were recorded on one day for Kate’s debut album The Kick Inside, of which only ‘Feel It’ made it onto the final selection.
Versions
There are two officially released versions of ‘Kite’: the album version and the live version from Hammersmith Odeon. However, a demo version from 1977 has also surfaced and was released on various bootleg cd’s”.
I will come to an excellent feature from Dreams of Orgonon. Even if some feel there are one or two songs on The Kick Inside that are not up to Kate Bush’s best – such as Room for the Life -, there is no denying the worth and sheer excellence of Feel It. A natural standout that should get a lot more focus and discussion around it:
“It’s long been remarked that Kate Bush’s primary instrument is her voice. Even when her melodies are idiosyncratic and sprawling and her albums’ productions demand an audience’s ear, listeners always talk about her voice first. Even an instrumental track like “Night Scented Stock” is guided by Bush’s vocals. Her most recent collection of new songs, 50 Words for Snow, takes a back-to-basics approach of voice-and-piano that Bush started her career with. While the Fairlight will guide Bush towards her best work, there’s hardly a more powerful duo in popular music than Bush and her piano.
“Feel It” is an exceedingly intimate affair, the only song on The Kick Inside to have no session musicians. It’s Bush alone at her piano, saying “no props this time, just hear me play.” “Feel It” is one of the more realist tracks on the album — rather than teaming with mysticism or high concepts, it has a fairly common down-to-earth situation: a one-night stand between two people who don’t know each other very well. “Well, it could be love/or it could be just lust/but it will be fun/it will be wonderful,” sings Bush.
It’s a song of pure hedonism, consequence-free and absorbed in the moment.
Notable is how “Feel It” takes The Kick Inside’s approach of youthful attitudes to adult subjects to its zenith. Its tone is secretive, subtextually whispering “be quiet — this is a sacred moment.” It’s relatively low tempo, with the piano guiding the song in a lugubrious, creeping G minor (with unexpected appearances of F minor and B diminished), almost laughing anxiously with an upward turn on “a little nervous laughter.” To hear a young female British singer to sing so frankly about matters like this in the Seventies must have been astonishing at the time. There’s a sense Bush is as nervous as she is giddy to be writing a song like this and putting it out on a major label.
As Zoey Peresman points out, “[Bush] stretches out the word ‘more’ with her inimitable voice for as long as she can, mimicking the sound of a woman in ecstasy.” Bush stresses the sexual nature of the song, punctuating the calls of “feel it” with sharp “ohs,” making it clear how far she’s taking this exercise.
For a Seventies song about love-making, “Feel It” is unusually explicit. Bush equates sex with music, using phrases like “synchronizing rhythm” and “keep on a-tunin’ in.” She marries her skill at crafting melodies to her love of the sensuous with remarkable ease, but adds an extra factor to the mix: bluntness. (For a similar song, listen to Tori Amos’ astonishing track “Icicle.” Really, play the two songs back-to-back. You’ll thank me later.) The clear references to penetration and other sex acts (“feel your warm hand walking around”) are startling by themselves, but Bush provides them with rhythm, quietly singing the verse and makes the chorus a burst of passion. By the end she trails off with “see what you’re doing to me,” as a song like “Feel It” must. It’s one hell of a track, an underrated Bush triumph of the Seventies. Let’s hope it surfaces on more “best of Bush” lists soon”.
Performed during The Tour of Life, it was a chance to see this erotic and sensual song come to life. It must have been quite strange performing it in front of a very large crowd every night! Feel It is a magnificent number that always has an impact when I listen to it. The second song on the second side of The Kick Inside – after James and the Cold Gun -, Feel It begins this run of love songs. It leads to Oh to Be in Love and L’Amour Looks Something Like You. From a teenage writer, there is something very mature and accomplished about the song. Mixing moments of juvenile lust with poetic thoughts, it is no wonder many people love Feel It. Kate Bush’s vocal is absolutely beautiful! Inhabiting the song fully, she brings you into things. Puts you in the scenes she is singing about. Such a powerful and passionate track, I hope that there is more coverage of Feel It next year. A Kate Bush song that ranks alongside her best deep cuts, I wanted to end this run of features with a true great. A gem on a debut album that cannot be compared to any other. Go and listen to the whole album, as there is this great build-up to Feel It. Such a beautiful song, I know the emotions that many experience when they hear it will hit. You will also…
FEEL it too.