FEATURE:
Kate Bush: Something Like a Song
Rubberband Girl
__________
I have written about this track…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in 1993 during filming the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
a few times through the years. Rubberband Girl is a song that is on Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes. Released as a single, it had two videos made. Not that many people have spoken about Rubberband Girl. I might revisit some of what I have written before. However, as it is coming up to its anniversary, I am featuring it again. I am going to be grabbing some information from Kate Bush Encyclopedia and what they have said about this song. Released in the U.K. on 6th September, 1993 and 7th December, 1993 in the U.S., it is one of the most underrated Kate Bush singles. The single release schedule was a bit odd for The Red Shoes. The first single release was an obvious one. Rubberband Girl is a natural lead single. However, a day after this song was released as a single, Eat the Music was released in the U.S. That decision to bring out one song in the U.K. (and other countries) and another in the U.S., three further singles were released. The final one, And So Is Love, was released on 31st October, 1994. Maybe an odd choice for a Hallowe’en single in a year when Britpop was ruling! However, I think the album as a whole is incredible. Maybe the production does suffer some of the worst traits of 1990s music. A bit compressed and lacking in depth and soul. Bush addressed this for 2011’s Director’s Cut. That was an album where Bush reworked and re-recorded songs from The Red Shoes and 1989’s The Sensual World. Rubberband Girl was one of the songs included for re-examination. I don’t think Bush had any strong attachment to the song or was overly-keen to include it. Maybe she felt the first single from that album was too important to leave it as it was. However, I love the original.
This fantastic single came out in the U.K. as a 7” single, a 12” single picture disc, a cassette single and a C.D.-single. The U.S. only had the C.D. version. The B-side to Rubberband Girl was Big Stripey Lie. This is a great deep cut where Bush played electric guitar for the first time on record. A reasonable chart success, Rubberband Girl did get to number twelve in the U.K. I am going to go into a bit more detail. Kate Bush merely thinks of Rubberband Girl as a bit of a fun. A pop confection, I think that it is better and deeper than this. The Red Shoes has some truly wonderful moments. Moments of Pleasure, Eat the Music and Lily. Maybe there are a few slightly weaker tracks, though the album as a whole is a lot stronger than it is given credit for. Also from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, this is what Bush said in 2011 about the superb Rubberband Girl:
“I thought the original ‘Rubberband’ was… Well, it’s a fun track. I was quite happy with the original, but I just wanted to do something really different. It is my least favourite track. I had considered taking it off to be honest. Because it didn’t feel quite as interesting as the other tracks. But I thought, at the same time, it was just a bit of fun and it felt like a good thing to go out with. It’s just a silly pop song really, I loved Danny Thompson’s bass on that, and of course Danny (McIntosh)’s guitar.
Mojo (UK), 2011”.
In the November 1993 edition of Future Music, we get some perspectives from Del Palmer. He was responsible for engineering and mixing on The Red Shoes. He and Bush used to be in a relationship. By the end of 1993, that relationship had ended. However, he continued to work alongside her up to and including her latest studio album, 50 Words for Snow. He sadly died last year. He was an essential and enormous part of her career. Here is what he had to say about Rubberband Girl: the exciting and catchy lead track from Kate Bush’s seventh studio album:
“Chosen as first single from the album, Rubberband Girl is up-tempo and infectiously melodic. Originally, the first single was intended to be Eat The Music. but during the production of the film to accompany the album, Rubberband Girl seemed to be catching everyone's imagination, and has proved to be a substantial chart success.
Although the song has a relatively straightforward pop/rock feel, the vocals are multi-tracked and some of them seem incredibly low-pitched. "This song and And So Is Love are typical of the live band feel," explains Del. "We were trying to create a very accessible, live sound and the fastest way to record was to have at least two or three people playing together initially.
"On Rubberband Girl the bass, drums and basic keyboards were all done together, but we did change the whole track afterwards in the sense of editing it digitally rather than re-doing tracks. The bass and drum sound was important because we wanted to have them consistent throughout the album."
Although Stuart Elliot and John Giblin's performances tended to go on to tape 'live' at an early stage, this didn't avoid the need for subsequent changes. "When you put later tracks down, the earlier ones sometimes have to change because the whole feel of the piece changes. Sometimes we had to do the bass and drums three or four times, not because we were unhappy with the original performances, but because the feel of the song had altered as new tracks were added. Rubberband Girl is one of the few that worked first time - it just has a basic rock feel with a riffing guitar, the backing vocals went down first and then we tried various lyrics and lead vocal ideas.
"In most songs the lyrics change a lot during the recording process, although a basic seed remains solid. It often gets to the point of struggling over just one word which has to be returned to many times -there's never any pressure to write a song to fill a particular function, like acting as a single or being a very slow ballad, so the whole feel can often change”.
There has been a bit of a mixed reception to Rubberband Girl. I last wrote about it late last year. I don’t think that it has aged badly. It is coming up for its thirty-second anniversary. I want to collate some of what has been said already. In 2022, Classic Rock History placed Rubberband Girl in their top ten Kate Bush songs: “The Kate Bush song “Rubberband Girl” was a bit of a departure for Kate Bush, but it was still so brilliant. Anything Kate Bush composed, recorded, and performed was simply stunning. She was that rare of an artist. We should have done a top 100 Kate Bush songs list instead. The song “Rubberband Girl” was released on the album The Red Shoes. The record was issued in 1993. The album featured an incredible lineup of guest musicians, including Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Prince”. This blog provided a very generous review of Rubberband Girl: “Rubberband Girl 9.5/10. This is Kate Bush's most dance-poppy track. "Running Up That Hill" was a big hit on the club scene, but this one seems even more danceable. However, this is far from a cheap track. The groove is fairly off-kilter but still danceable --- in that way it's comparable to a Roxy Music song…
She has enough taste to have a nice rhythmic saxophone, xylophones, awesome guitar solos, her brand of freaky singing (including a bit of 'play acting' ... dialog and even some goofy "rubber band" vocals) ... All of this PLUS a melody that's catchier than anything... There's really quite a lot in this song, and you'll have fun hearing it multiple times I'm sure”. Although Bush wrote the song quite quickly in the studio (not something she did often), I feel there is something personal about Rubberband Girl. Maybe personal circumstances and a slight downturn in critical praise after the massive success and 1985’s Hounds of Love might have made her feel like she needed to bounce back. Some critics writing her off. Entering the 1990s and trying to adapt to a very different music scene with a lot of ‘new Kate Bushes’ being spotlighted, it was a moment for strength and resurgence: “A rubberband bouncing back to life/A rubberband bend the beat/If I could learn to give like a Rubberband/I’d be back on my feet/A rubberband hold me trousers up/A rubberband ponytails/If I could learn to twang like a Rubberband/I’d be a rubberband girl”. On 6th September, Rubberband Girl turns thirty-two. The first taste of a new album following 1989’s The Sensual World, the public did respond to it. However, I think critics were muted in their praise. People need to reassess. It is a fantastic elastic track from one of music’s…
ABSOLUTE best and strongest.