FEATURE:
Kate Bush: Something Like a Song
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Heads We’re Dancing (The Sensual World)
__________
I have not spotlighted this song…
IN THIS PHOTO: Charli xcx attends the 2025 Met Gala/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
for a while, as I thought it was overdue an outing. A track from her 1989 album, The Sensual world, Heads We’re Dancing has a fascinating story and angle. Charli xcx mentioned in an interview how her favourite Kate Bush album, the one that defined her, is The Sensual World. Her favourite song from the album is the beguiling Heads We’re Dancing. I don’t know if this is still the case, though I thought it was interesting and cool that a modern Pop great spoke about a Kate Bush deep cut. Rather than go for an obvious song and album, she helped give light to a song especially not well known or played. It is one of many diamonds on Kate Bush’s sixth studio album. Maybe I have written about Heads We’re Dancing as a deep cut. However, I want to elevate it and show that it is one of the highlights from The Sensual World. The Charli xcx-approved gem could only have been written by Kate Bush. So out-there and unexpected is its inspiration. I am going to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, as they have some interview archive where Kate Bush discusses the inspiration behind Heads We’re Dancing:
“That’s a very dark song, not funny at all! (…) I wrote the song two years ago, and in lots of ways I wouldn’t write a song like it now. I’d really hate it if people were offended by this…But it was all started by a family friend, years ago, who’d been to dinner and sat next to this guy who was really fascinating, so charming. They sat all night chatting and joking. And next day he found out it was Oppenheimer. And this friend was horrified because he really despised what the guy stood for. I understood the reaction, but I felt a bit sorry for Oppenheimer. He tried to live with what he’d done, and actually, I think, committed suicide. But I was so intrigued by this idea of my friend being so taken by this person until they knew who they were, and then it completely changing their attitude. So I was thinking, what if you met the Devil? The Ultimate One: charming, elegant, well spoken. Then it turned into this whole idea of a girl being at a dance and this guy coming up, cocky and charming, and she dances with him. Then a couple of days later she sees in the paper that it was Hitler. Complete horror: she was that close, perhaps could’ve changed history. Hitler was very attractive to women because he was such a powerful figure, yet such an evil guy. I’d hate to feel I was glorifying the situation, but I do know that whereas in a piece of film it would be quite acceptable, in a song it’s a little bit sensitive.
Len Brown, ‘In the Realm of the Senses’. NME (UK), 7 October 1989
It’s a very dark idea, but it’s the idea of this girl who goes to a big ball; very expensive, romantic, exciting, and it’s 1939, before the war starts. And this guy, very charming, very sweet-spoken, comes up and asks her to dance but he does it by throwing a coin and he says, “If the coin lands with heads facing up, then we dance!” Even that’s a very attractive ‘come on’, isn’t it? And the idea is that she enjoys his company and dances with him and, days later, she sees in the paper who it is, and she is hit with this absolute horror – absolute horror. What could be worse? To have been so close to the man… she could have tried to kill him… she could have tried to change history, had she known at that point what was actually happening. And I think Hitler is a person who fooled so many people. He fooled nations of people. And I don’t think you can blame those people for being fooled, and maybe it’s these very charming people… maybe evil is not always in the guise you expect it to be.
Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1, 14 October 1989”.
All the lyrics are terrific, though I love how she leads in. Right from the first few lines, we are drawn into this dark and compelling introduction: “You talked me into the game of chance/It was ’39, before the music started/When you walked up to me and you said/“Hey, heads we dance.”/Well, I didn’t know who you were/Until I saw the morning paper/There was a picture of you/A picture of you ‘cross the front page./It looked just like you, just like you in every way/But it couldn’t be true/It couldn’t be true/You stepped out of a stranger”. There is this beauty and sense of the orchestra about Heads We’re Dancing. Nigel Kennedy on the viola (he would also be one of the musicians to the follow-up of The Sensual World, 1993’s The Red Shoes). Alan Murphy on guitar. I think Del Palmer plays percussion in addition to rhythm guitar. Jonathan Williams on the cello. Orchestration by the late great Michael Kamen. One reason why Del Palmer does not play bass on the track is because we get this wonderful performance by Mick Karn. Unorthodox and uncommercial, Bush praised his performance in an interview from 1989: “He’s very distinctive – so many people admire him because he stays in that unorthodox area, he doesn’t come into the commercial world – he just does his thing”.
There is not a lot written about Heads We’re Dancing. However, there are one or two features. Unlike other Kate Bush songs that are not really known and have nothing written them, perhaps the stranger story and inspiration means that people are compelled to share their thoughts. I really love the fact Charli xcx has name-checked the song. I think the last time I wrote about Head’s We Dancing was in 2020. I want to explore it once more. Before quoting form a feature about the song, I want to highlight critical reviews of The Sensual World where Heads We’re Dancing is mentioned. When Pitchfork reviewed The Sensual World in 2019, they said this about Heads We’re Dancing: “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.Bottom of Form It’s more fanciful than most of The Sensual World’s little secrets. To hear someone recall formative childhood truths (the lush grandeur of “Reaching Out”) and lingering romantic pipedreams (the longing of “Never Be Mine”) is like being given a reel of their memory tapes and discovering what makes them tick”. The BBC gave it a brief mention when they reviewed The Sensual World in 2009: "Heads We’re Dancing", which sounds the most 80s of anything here (think electronic power drum beats and synthy-guitars) is a complete contrast, telling the tale of a woman dancing all night with a stranger who turns out to be Hitler”.
Maybe this is another Kate Bush song that could not be made today (see also Never for Ever’s The Infant Kiss). In 2023, Far Out Magazine reacted to a song where there is a romanticism of Adolf Hitler. Those Bush would never glorify something so horrific or a person like him, it shows her bravery and boldness as an artist. Nobody else in 1989 writing songs like this! How would any of us react if we are in the situation of dancing with the worst person in the world?! Unless we are unfortunate enough to be invited to The White House, it is a slim possibility! However, I am endlessly fascinated by Heads We’re Dancing. A song from The Sensual World nobody talks about (see also Between a Man and a Woman and The Fog). It is one of the clear highlights:
“However, the idea that someone could become drawn to a person until they knew who they were only intrigued her further, and soon she asked herself, “What if you met the Devil? The Ultimate One: charming, elegant, well spoken. Then it turned into this whole idea of a girl being at a dance and this guy coming up, cocky and charming, and she dances with him.”
Who would be the ultimate figure when it comes to envisioning the most evil person to ever exist? One that says, “If the coin lands with heads facing up, then we dance!” in a softly-spoken voice, with no indication whatsoever that he might be harbouring some big, dark secret? For Bush, Adolf Hitler was the only person to fit the role. “The idea is that she enjoys his company and dances with him and, days later, she sees in the paper who it is, and she is hit with this absolute horror – absolute horror,” she sad. “What could be worse? To have been so close to the man… she could have tried to kill him… she could have tried to change history, had she known at that point what was actually happening.”
However, perhaps most importantly, Bush is in no way condoning attraction to criminality; instead, it’s an exploration of how our judgement can be clouded when someone appears nothing but friendly on the surface. She explained this, adding: “I think Hitler is a person who fooled so many people. He fooled nations of people. And I don’t think you can blame those people for being fooled, and maybe it’s these very charming people… maybe evil is not always in the guise you expect it to be.”
Although Bush understands that ‘Heads We’re Dancing’ could be seen as “glorifying the situation” and recognises the fact that she wouldn’t ever make a song like this now, it still begs the all-important question about human nature: would we know it if evil was staring us in the face?”.
In 2020, Joe Corr, for Medium, shared more words about Heads We’re Dancing than every other human being in history. A detailed and deep exploration of a song that has political connotations and parallels today, it is a great article. I have chosen parts of it that are particularly interesting, attitude and worthy. A feature that emphasises why more people need to hear this song:
“The whole album deals with the trajectory of growing and manoeuvring through a world of sensual experiences. It charts the highs as well as the lows, where the joyous imagining of Molly Bloom entering our three-dimensional world is contrasted against tales of dangerous obsession (A Deeper Understanding) and of desires being snuffed out by reality and leading to heartbreak (Never be Mine). A lyric on the latter, a confession of “I want you as the dream, not the reality’’, reflects an important component of The Sensual World’s vantage point on sensuality — that of recognising the barrier between fantasy and fact, of desires and realities, that takes on a new relevance when applied to Heads We’re Dancing. The song embodies that horrifying moment where pleasures become pain — perhaps where we recognise that our habits are dangerous, our vices degenerative, and that now it is too late to change and the damage is done. Here it is presented with extremity — being seduced by a fascist dictator, on the eve of a world war — but it can be easily scaled down to represent any person, thing or idea that enters into your life and seduces you into acting with careless abandon. As Bush states above, Hitler stands in as a perfect metaphor for destructive behaviours or obsessions because he was so seductive to the German public, and this was so intrinsically tied to his villainy — 1939 was both the year Hitler threatened the extermination of ‘the Jewish race in Europe’ in the Reichstag, and the year he was voted Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.
What’s more, the timing of the tale suggests that our protagonist is a victim of either their own self-delusion, or perhaps their own ignorance — after all, Hitler was a known figure worldwide before 1939. Which loops us back into one of The Sensual World’s other dominant themes, that of growing up. Of course, sensuality and maturity are intrinsically linked — it is through making our mistakes and exploring the pleasures of the flesh that we emerge into functioning adults. Head’s We’re Dancing is not only a warning, but something of a recognition — a recognition of the mistakes we must make in order to learn and become better people. Regret is a powerful and formative emotion, as expressed on the albums biggest hit This Woman’s Work: “I should be hoping, but I can’t stop thinking — of the things we should’ve said that we never said, of all the things we should’ve done though we never did”.
Heads We’re Dancing may in fact stand as her last overtly political parable, and it retains all of the bite of its predecessors. In many ways Heads We’re Dancing serves as a watermark in Bush’s career, much like its parent album. Rarely again would Bush return to such an aggressive tone in her songs (The Big Lie on The Red Shoes being one exception), and though she continued to pen some outlandish lyrics going forward, Heads We’re Dancing was the last time she truly went off the wall and dabbled with controversy. As such, it remains one of her most undervalued and underappreciated songs, resigned to be a quirky deep-cut on a record overflowing with some of her most lush and romantic recordings. I hope that here I have made a case for it as one of her crowning achievements, a piece of art that unifies all of the things that make Bush such a landmark talent”.
There is a lot to love and discuss about Heads We’re Dancing. I actually think an artist could release a track like this today. However, we would be talking about someone like Donald Trump. A flip of a coin and this game of chance. Kate Bush (or the heroine) being talked into a dance with the most evil man in history. Even for Kate Bush, this was such a brilliantly unusual source of inspiration. Nothing quite like it on The Sensual World. Showing how you could never predict what she would do next! Overlooked and ignored, Heads We’re Dancing is simply…
A phenomenal song.