FEATURE:
Wave After Wave: Nodding Back to the Original…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985 in a publicity shot for Hounds of Love
Queens of Music That Were Inspired or Affected by Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love
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I have written…
IN THIS PHOTO: Tori Amos in San Francisco in 1992 (her 1992 debut album, Little Earthquakes, drew comparisons to Kate Bush and 1985’s Hounds of Love)/PHOTO CREDIT: Jay Blakesberg
a few features recently around Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book on Hounds of Love. There is a chapter called Wave After Wave. It is about how Hounds of Love has influenced artists since its release in 1985. I have discussed Kate Bush and how she has inspired so many artists. I am going to dip into that well one more time. This album is a Pop masterpiece. Visionary and ground-breaking, the album has a new life today. Perhaps heightened and buoyed by the success and new life of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) after it was featured in Stranger Things (in 2022), there are artists who have definitely been struck Hounds of Love. Perhaps still her most influential album, it goes beyond its sound and ambition. Leah Kardos writes how its legacy on self-producing non-male artists is huge. It cleared a path in 1985. It still does today. In terms of how these innovators and incredible artists would be free from being labelled eccentric or weird by a misogynistic music press. It still happens a bit today. Though I do hear artists today, producers or not, who have taken strength from Kate Bush and her 1985 masterpiece. Just a detour for a second. I am going pop in an interview from June when Charli xcx visited BBC Radio Music to discuss her work. Nick Grimshaw interviewed her. I do feel that she has been guided and affected by Kate Bush. She has mentioned The Kick Inside and Wuthering Heights (both 1978). Heads We’re Dancing from The Sensual World (1989). However, you can feel the influence of Hounds of Love. Songs of hers that nod to Hounds of Love. This review of Chains of Love – from this year’s “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack, which Charli xcx wrote the songs for – mentions Hounds of Love’s title track (and Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights). This Rolling Stone review of Wuthering Heights does also mention Kate Bush: “Wuthering Heights isn’t a soundtrack or a score. It’s a fully realized album, with great songs that add a whole new musical texture to her always-changing sensibility. She didn’t really take the bait of Fennell’s horny screenplay, and instead turned in a love letter to the whole Gothic-romantic canon — from the Brontë sisters to the second side of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love to windswept Eighties pop weepers to Nine Inch Nails. The results would make any Cure-addicted teenager or high school English teacher proud”.
I am fighting a case for other Kate Bush albums being more influential. The Dreaming and The Kick Inside are having more impact and being mentioned more. Even so, the boundary-breaking scope and brilliance of Hounds of Love is no doubt connecting with modern queens. If Hounds of Love has not specifically been name-checked by modern artists who are Kate Bush fans, you can tell its impact and legacy feeds into their own work. Olivia Rodrigo, Halsey, ROSALÍA, Hayley Williams, St. Vincent and Björk. I was watching an interview between Graham Norton and Madonna (I am writing this in June but sharing it in August). She was promoting her album, Confessions II. I do think Hounds of Love actually influenced her. She is very much her own artist, but Hounds of Love took Madonna’s Like a Virgin of the top of the U.K. album chart in 1985. I think there was something in Hounds of Love and the way Kate Bush was reshaping and reframing Pop. How she was working on her own terms. Building her own home studio, producing the album solo and kicking down the door. Even if Madonna was doing that before Hounds of Love came out, she would do so more emphatically and ambitiously after 1984’s Like a Virgin. By 1989’s Like a Prayer, you can see this very much coming to fruition and in full bloom. Phoebe Bridgers has mentioned Kate Bush in interviews like this and this. Whilst Bridgers’s music may differ to Hounds of Love, you feel that “imagistic songwriting and immersive productions” which Leah Kardos writes “stretched the boundaries of what pop music could be” have no doubt been taken to heart by incredible modern greats like Phoebe Bridgers.
Whether it is the way Hounds of Love broke ground or, in the words of writer Dorian Lynskey “Some artists open the door to a new room in the house of music; Bush is one of a handful whose imagination revealed the existence of a whole new wing”, you can feel that to this day. Tori Amos’s debut album, 1992’s Little Earthquakes, found her compared to Kate Bush. Perhaps lazy, Leah Kardos writes how there is a “quality to the big, gated production on ‘Precious Things and ‘Crucify’, with the latter song’s melismatic ‘Cha-ee-a-ee-a-ee-a-ee-ains’ recalling something of the ‘Yea-ee-yeah-ee-yeah-eee, yooo’ from ‘Cloudbusting’”. Other songs on Little Earthquakes compared to tracks on Hounds of Love. Little Earthquakes influenced Alanis Morissette’s 1995 breakthrough, Jagged Little Pill. Writer Tom Doyle noted that. He interviewed Tori Amos in 1998. Amos revealed she was blown away when she heard Kate Bush. In terms of incredible and innovative artists who have been impacted by Hounds of Love, you can name Florence + The Machine, PJ Harvey, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Madison Beer, The Anchoress, Tate McRae, Sienna Spiro, Olivia Dean, Lorde, and St. Vincent. There is a whole new generation of Pop artists who have been affected by Hounds of Love (or Kate Bush in general). Many first hearing Kate Bush through Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Modern and young greats like Adéla have been inspired by Bush and you feel Hounds of Love has influenced their own work and production. It is that aspect of Kate Bush self-producing the album and doing it on her terms that is powerful. Few women in music could afford this luxury in 1985. Look now, and there are more and more women taking control and ensuring their vision is realised. Björk is a big fan of Kate Bush. She has cited The Dreaming as one of her favourite albums. She did shout out to Kate Bush in 2022 when Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was back in public consciousness. Promoting her album, Fossora, the success of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was a triumphant moment. This vindication for an artist often seen as odd, a witch, and labelled all sorts of things by sexist and misogynistic people in the media.
Björk said it (2022) was a moment when matriarchal music was being accepted. The world finally ready for female-produced music. It may be an exaggeration, though the chart dominance of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) did change things. Björk said this to Pitchfork. How Bush was the producer and creating this environment. In a patriarchal music scene in 1985, Hounds of Love was this masterpiece that was a major commercial success. In 2022, this woman in her sixties was enjoying new accolades and acclaim. There are so many artists today that I feel are empowered and driven by Hounds of Love. Or the album has impacted them somehow. Caroline Polachek is another artist that springs to mind. I have mentioned Fiona Apple. A song on her 2020 album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, does reference Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Such a timeless Kate Bush song. The title track, in fact. That entire album has similarities to Hounds of Love. The album has impacted women behind music. Leah Kardos herself, though musical, does not see herself as a musician. Though Hounds of Love gave her strength to work on her own terms and realise her goals and visions without comprises. Following “your muse uncompromisingly”.
The success of Hounds of Love meant Bush could take time between albums. The gaps lengthening after 1985. Previously, the longest gap between albums was three years (1982’s The Dreaming to Hounds of Love). Four years until The Sensual World; a further four until The Red Shoes; twelve years after that until Aerial, and then six further years until Director’s Cut. Now, as the album is in the culture and hugely influential, its creator has not released an album in almost fifteen years. She has the power to do that now. Working on her own terms at her own pace. That has given so many other women that courage. In an industry that demands constant output unless you be seen as invisible or inconsistent, even artists who are prolific – such as Charli xcx – still are carrying the spirit and messages of Hounds of Love. Its messages of love’s triumph over isolation, darkness and pain is especially important at an incredibly violent and depressing moment in history. Something, as Leah Kardos finishes the chapter off with, we need to feel now more than ever. Artists coming through very much adopting that objective.
I am going to finish off with this feature that I have mentioned before. Reviewing Sarah Kinsley’s album, Escaper (2024), she is among Gen-Z artists like Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Rina Sawayama and Mitski who are Kate Bush fans. Artists like Solange (who is a Millennial). Strong and accomplished artists and producers who are mixing sophistication and youthfulness. You can see that Hounds of Love has impacted them. An album that is as relevant and influential today more than ever, we will see this album continue to ignite and infuse so much of today’s best and most extraordinary Pop music:
“So far, the 2020s has become one of my personal favorite decades in terms of popular music. Even if I don’t listen to them regularly, millennial pop queens who found success in the 2010s such as Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepsen continue to release albums that appeal to mass audiences despite being creative and well-crafted. However, I’ve more so been attracted to the prominence of Gen Z women making catchy, witty, sex-positive mainstream dance-pop albums influenced by the 1970s and 80s, such as Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023) and Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet (2024). Even more appealing to me is the increase of popularity with singer-songwriters of Asian descent in this decade, including Joji, Mitski, beabadoobee, Michelle Zauner from Japanese Breakfast, and Rina Sawayama, to name a few very well-known examples. In addition, social media has caused obscure Asian musicians to become better known. One of my favorite new artists, Luna Li, became viral on social media with her jam sessions that showed off her impressive ability to skillfully play several instruments. The amazing young artist I’m about to rave about in this review, also found initial success on TikTok. Her name is Sarah Kinsley.
At the young age of twenty-four years, Sarah shows an impressive ability to write and record musical compositions that are mature and wise beyond her years, while still displaying youthful optimism at the same time. This is also apparent in how she speaks and performs on stage, in social media videos, and in interviews. She has spoken about how important it is for her to record and produce her own music in an environment that caters mainly to men, and she believes in giving recognition to other women producing music like she does, which I find encouraging in any industry. Escaper may be her debut album, but she has produced singles and EPs prior to it, and while she is fairly new to the music scene, she does not feel like she is”.
I have dropped in a Charli xcx interview, but this one is also worth watching. She talks about BRAT (2024) and female messiness. That openness and honesty. Whilst not the BRAT of its day, there is this sense of vulnerability and empowerment on Hounds of Love. Also, the singles from “Wuthering Heights” and her new album, Music, Fashion, Film, sees this generation-defining megastar and genius take Kate Bush and Hounds of Love to heart. In terms of this lack of compromise. Charli xcx always shifting and doing such interesting and bold work. She said in an interview with Fashion Neurosis how there is all this critique placed on women in music. Finding this confidence in her music. One can definitely find thematic similarities between Hounds of Love and BRAT. Beyond Charli xcx, there is a score of women in music who have been influenced by Hounds of Love, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). From producing on their own terms or allowing a sense of messiness and frankness to come through against potential backlash or criticism, Kate Bush definitely pathed the way. Although women in music before Kate Bush did this, I do think that many came after 1985. Women being who they are and taking control of their voice and vision, many owe a nod to…
THE pioneering Kate Bush.