Kate Bush

Batshit genius. I love her so hard.

Love her. At least through The Sensual World.

This Woman's Work is sublime.

Love.

What else can be said about pure genius?

Total genius

I’m with r2. Loved her through the Sebsual World album. Some of the most amazing creative and moving songs until then. Not as keen on her work afterward.

I think Kate's Bush needs a trim. Where are the pube-y scissors?

She became a little too shy for her own good IMO, but her videos and albums from the 70’s and 80’s as well as the one tour she did in 1979 are fucking magical. Also worth seeking out is her sole American tv appearance on SNL when Eric Idle hosted

It’s absolutely incomprehensible to me that women making music 40 years ago were leap years ahead of the bullshit that is coming out now. They had strong deep voices, they didn’t sing solely about sex, they created entirely new sounds and worlds. Now they’re all in leotards slapping their pussies in a whisper-coo voice.

What the fuck.

Love you, Kate. Thanks for the quality MUSIC.

I love almost everything she's done.

I give her props for not being a famewhore and for keeping a high level of quality in her work.

Her past two albums, Aerial and Snow are amazing for all those who don't think she's put out quality work since The Sensual World.

Mostly agree, R12, though 50 Words for Snow has the awful Elton duet and the puzzling spoken word thingy from Stephen Fry.

I’ve been a fan since the beginning. I was fortunately able to attend 2 nights of her 2014 residency. I never thought I would see her perform live, let alone twice, Totally batshit crazy but in a mad English way though I suspect her day to day life is probably fairly normal.

Just exquisite.

Back in the 80s straight, crunchy music dudes loved her: she was mother, sister, daughter, and lover to them.

My favorite, forever. I was 15 when I first heard of her, when she released Hounds of Love. The Ninth Wave opened my eyes to a world of contemporary music beyond the top 40, and led me to explore many other artists, that I might not have, if I hadn't heard of her. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Dead Can Dance, Danielle Dax, and many many more.

I first saw Wuthering Heights on California Music Channel; the host Rick (Kekorian?) said he was a big fan but she was an "acquired taste." I fell in love with her right away!

My favorite album is her debut one, there's not a bad song on it, her voice was also at it highest-pitched. I generally love her first five albums the most; I wasn't crazy about Sensual World or The Red Shoes.

I remember staring at the cover to The Dreaming in the mid-'80s & thinking how she & Andrea Evans/Tina from OLTL looked a bit alike then.

Fun Fact: Wuthering heights was one of rapper Tupac Shakur's favorite songs

The English Madonna.

Kate Bush's dad was my doctor when I was a child and we used to play in the fields on their farm.

Happy to see some KB love in this corner of the internet. Hounds of Love and The Dreaming are my favorites. Own 10 copies of The Kick Inside.

R21, are you serious?

The Fairy Queen of my dreams.

I'm sad to say that I never "got" her songs. To me they don't have strong or memorable melody lines. However, her videos are beautiful and she is compelling to watch.

Between First Wave on Sirius, and my Amazon Prime Music streaming service, I hear Running up That Hill, Hounds of Love, and Wuthering Heights several times a week. I never skip them! I heard “Hill” three times yesterday, and I sang along every time.

I also love Babooshka, Cloud Bursting, and a lot of her other songs. During lockdown in 2020, I watched a lot of documentaries and clips of her on Prime and YouTube. She’s a genius.

R23 Yes. I didn't really realise it at the time. Her family's land backed on to that of my best friend's and we used to play in the field. I'm not sure it was really a 'working farm' in those days. She grew up in Woodlands Farm on Shooter's Hill. I was quite young when her father retired so I'm not going to pretend I had some kind of relationship with either him or his daughter but he didn't mind us playing in the fields as he recognised me.

Not the greatest claim to fame, but it's kind of all I've got. Boy George grew up in that tiny pocket of SE London/Kent Borders too.

running up the hill is her only song I like, but it is brilliant for sure.

Love all of it but The Big Sky is my favorite.

I love that Dawn French is in the Experiment IV video.

Kate's story is fairly unusual, and would be pretty unlikely these days. Her family and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd had a mutual friend, who got a tape of Kate's songs to him while Kate was still in school. David Gilmour paid for studio time, and arranged for Andrew Powell to professionally record three demo songs , and get them to EMI.

EMI signed her, and gave her an advice to go and "grow up a bit." They wanted her on the label, but felt that she was too young, and if the album was a hit, she might be too immature to handle the success, and if it wasn't, it might discourage her interest in the music industry.

She spent a year or so taking dance and movement classes, and playing pubs around London with the KT Bush band.

She also received a great deal of advice on the business side, setting up companies, retaining publishing rights, and having the companies managed by her family. Her brother Paddy is a multi-instrumentalist, and has played on most of her albums.

Because of all this, she was referred to as "The Company's Daughter," for a long time. She fought them on a lot of decisions, though. They didn't want Withering Heights to be the first single, were reluctant to allow her to take over production duties, leading to an assistance credit on her second album, and co-producer credit on her third. Her fourth, The Dreaming, was the first where she was the sole producer, and it took a long time to record, due to her experimental efforts in the studio. The album was a different style than previous albums, and didn't sell as well.

As a result of how much she had spent on The Dreaming, she decided to build her own studio, so she could be in full control, and take the time she needed to take to record Hounds of Love.

Hounds of Love was a huge success, and, in my opinion, wouldn't have been possible without her experimentation on The Dreaming. A lot of the production techniques, sonic textures, and vocal expressions on the album are refined, more mature versions of techniques found on The Dreaming.

It boggles my mind that those two albums were recorded when she was in her early to mid 20s.

Sorry, that was pretty long.

Her work with Sarah Brightman and Helena Bonham Carter is superlative.

What is her best work?

Kate Bush and Madonna are both equally talented.

I saw her on SNL in 1978 — went out and bought The Kick Inside shortly thereafter. Been a fan ever since.

Love her, OP. Wish she'd hurry up and get a new album out and, maybe, for once, consider touring.

Anyone know why she takes so long to put out albums and tours so little?

There are a few things, R37.

She tends to work experimentally, and is something of a perfectionist, and takes a long time to get the music just the way she wants it, or as close to it as she can. She stated in an interview that she spent a year and half on the song Love and Anger. She also took a 12 year break after the death of her mother, the break-up of her long relationship with Del Palmer, and the birth of her son. The birth of her son was a very well kept secret, until Peter Gabriel accidentally spilled the beans when he was 8.

In terms of touring, Kate did one tour, The Tour of Life. She said that she found the experience exhausting, and would rather expend her energy on creating new music, rather than performing existing music. She is also notoriously unfond of doing publicity and interviews. She also doesn't like to fly, so it is unlikely that she would ever tour the US.

In addition, the lighting engineer for the Tour of Life, Bill Duffield, died after falling to an area below the stage after a show in Dorset in 1979. Kate, Peter Gabriel, and Steve Harley would later hold a benefit and memorial show in his honor. The song Blow Away (for Bill) from Never Forever is dedicated to him, and he is referenced in Moments of Pleasure from The Red Shoes.

She doesn't attribute her reluctance to tour to his death, but I imagine that it had an impact on her. She was 20 when that happened, and I would imagine it was very traumatic.

You never know if her most recent album will be her last. Her residency in London a few years ago was a surprise, and while I doubt she will repeat it, I would imagine that if she wanted to play live again it would be in that format.

According to Big Boi, he has recorded a song with Kate, but as of yet, it remains unreleased.

I saw her at Hammersmith in 2014, and it was the most extraordinary spectacle I have ever experienced at a live performance. She has a remarkably vivid gift for storytelling.

I would struggle with choosing my favourite song of hers, but this is my favourite video.

I don't use this term lightly, but she was truly a pioneer. So many alternative pop/rock artists of the 90s and 2000s owe her.

Wasn't Madonna at her 2014 residency?

I was so jealous of Londoners. I seriously contemplated a UK trip during her residency, but then I got laid off and couldn't justify the expense.

R32, what is this work?

In May 1987, Kate traveled to Dallas to perform at a club a friend of hers had opened.

My friend's mother could have gotten us tickets through her boss, but she figured that we two queens, being such huge Kate fans, would already had heard of the gig and gotten tickets.

We hadn't and we missed it.

Still depressed about it 35 years later.

She's wonderful. She should've been bigger in the US, but due to her aversion to publicity and fear of flying it wasn't going to happen.

And yet she flew to the United States several times from 1978 to 1994 promoting her albums.

But she never toured, and her publicity wasn't all that much.

In the US at least, Kate Bush only seems to be popular (or even known) among middle-aged gay men.

Is "Running Up That Hill " her best song?

R49, I’m a middle-aged woman and I’d say the people I know personally, who like her are truly mixed. Straight guy, lesbian, two straight women, teenage girl, and of course a gay man or two.

She was very creative with lovely, unique music.

Talented but not as talented as Madonna.

It's disgusting! I hope nothing more crawls its way out of it!...

...

...oh wait: I thought you said [italic]Kate's.[/italic]

Take up bowling, loon @R54, and don't try to divert every thread into your crazy obsessions.

Back to Kate Bush: she's a known perfectionist. She recorded and scrapped entire albums after years of working on them just because she wasn't happy how they turned out. In many ways, she reminds me of another favorite artist of mine, Sade, in the sense that the two of them only release something when they are absolutely happy with it, not being pressured by anyone and keep their private lives very private and very far from the public's eye.

R54 made me laugh so much.

Very juvenile and silly, but effective.

"Kashka from Baghdad lives in sin, they say, with another man..."

She's a whackadoo!

And don't even get me started on Brad Pitt...

R50, Running Up That Hill is probably her best known song, and it is a great song. Her music spans a broad range of styles including 70s pop, lite jazz, art-rock, prog rock, and world music. She uses unusual instruments (most likely ones that her brother Paddy has exposed her to) and has used elements of Irish, Bulgarian, and African folk music in her songs, among elements from other cultures such as drum talk.

I would say that Running Up That Hill is ONE OF her best songs, and may be her best single. Another is Leave It Open from the Dreaming. This song actually spawned a contest for her fan club, where the fans had to guess the technique that she used to record distorted vocals at the end of the song. Here is the answer:

She recorded herself singing "We let the weirdness in."

She then played it backward, and learned to sing it the way that it sounded when played backward

She then recorded herself singing it backward

She then flipped that vocal, and that is what appears in the final song (backward masked recording of her singing the phrase in backward phonetics.) It sounds distorted and strange, but can be understood. Amazingly, someone did win that contest by guessing the correct answer.

Wuthering Heights is her most iconic if not her best tune

Kate

I love Wuthering Heights. I was 12 when it was released, and I have never heard anything like it before or since. She is a true original.

MARY! me, but she has a way of stirring up impressions and memories and sensations in me with her music. It’s like I recognize something. Fucks with my subconscious. I’ve had similar reactions to some Fiona Apple songs. Oh, and David Bowie.

She’s a genius.

Why is she collaborating with a rapper ?

I think I’ve finally had enough of DL. Kate Bush not as good as Madonna. Go fuck yourself, twat head.

Kate

Listening to her again. Wonder.

I like her but the "I love Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Bjork, Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, etc." gays have quickly become some of the most insufferable.

Wasn't Prince a big fan?

Prince was a big fan of female creativity so I wouldn't be surprised R69.

Chips of plutonium twinkling in every lung. Of course now it's coronavirus but doesn't rhyme as well.

Moving

Hounds of Love.

Her best album. EVER

The title track helped this gayling be creative and expressive. Absolutely no regrets.

I fluctuate back and forth between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love, as to which is her best album, and tend to view them as twin masterpieces.

I was listening to songs from The Dreaming today, and the wild creativity of that album is really something. Vocally, the songs are dense, and she is using an enormous number of techniques within the same song. She drank milk and ate chocolate before recording some songs to get a phlegmy tone in her voice, and there are pure vocals, raspy vocals, wails, and howls, all within the same song. Of course, she also turns into a mule at the end of the album.

Musically, she played with instruments, running them through weird filters, she raided the canteen at Abbey Road for pots and pans to use in the recordings, and they wired up doors in the studios and recorded them being slammed to use as snares.

Hounds of Love is a more cohesive album, The Ninth Wave especially, obviously, while The Dreaming whizzes around the world from England to Vietnam, to Australia, Ireland, and back again, with an array of musical styles, lots of energy, and ends in a haunted house, and the aforementioned muling of Kate. It's a bonkers album, and not something anyone was prepared to receive from Kate back in the early 80s.

I stated above that I don't believe she could have made Hounds of Love without making The Dreaming first, and while the Dreaming is more raw and wild, Hounds of Love is more refined and mature. The both really show Kate at the top of her game, and they stand the test of time.

I also think that Lionheart is quite underrated - even by Kate herself, as she tends to be quite critical of that album.

R74. Well said

Beyond the Dreaming

Awesome

I fucking love Kate Bush. That said, in most of her music videos she's a total over-acting ham.

"Running Up That Hill" is my favorite Kate Bush song. I never liked anything else as much from the Hounds of Love album.

THE DREAMING is also my favorite. “Houdini” and “Get Out Of My House” are an amazing one-two punch at the end.

While I love the songs, LIONHEART is by far her weakest album. Almost every song was a leftover from THE KICK INSIDE.

Kate's put on some pounds!

R81.

What, r82? Do you have something to say?

I was today years old when I realized that "Infant Kiss" was based on a 1960s movie, "The Innocents", which I watched today. Deborah Kerr stars in a story of a Victorian governess who is convinced there are adulterous ghosts possessing the bodies of the children in her care. It's a great movie, and Kate's song is what I immediately thought of while watching it.

I luv huh

R78, that's exactly why I love her. She's a total ham, she does not hold back, she isn't too terribly cynical, she isn't meta, she's divine and real and campy and it all just comes together.

Billie Eilisch's music sounds influenced by Kate Bush to me

In her 1979 video for "Them Heavy People," I've always thought Kate looked like Joan Collins.

Anyone think Kate Bush and Madonna are similar?

R88 In terms of talent alone Kate is on a whole different level to Madonna, I wouldn’t even put them together in the same sentence as it’s an insult to Kate.

Kate Bush and Madonna are both excellent in their particular niches. They are two very different artists.

r90

Will the fucking Madonna troll leave us alone?

Nope

R92, why don't you like madonna?

Anna

Bump

In the 80s I had a beautiful vinyl copy of Hounds of Love pressed in the color of swirled ivory. Good I wish I still had that.

Ivory as in color and not material I presume?

Technically it was listed as marbled vinyl. I have a marbled copy of Hounds of Love on both vinyl and cassette. The vinyl is prettier because the vinyl format displays the marbling better.

Enjoy!

She and Tori Amos are my go-to musicians. They’ve both produced my favorite albums of all time—Boys for Pele, Aerial, Under the Pink, and The Dreaming.

I love ALL of Kate’s albums, but am particularly drawn to Hounds of Love, The Dreaming, Aerial, and 50 Words for Snow.

Just one of the masterpieces from Aerial:

Another:

I love Kate Bush, but I have heard some stories about her eccentricities. Apparently she fucked her way through all the men in the UK music industry when she was young. Good for her!

I also heard that she attended a meeting with EMI America when they were trying to launch her career in the US. She sat under the boardroom table sucking her thumb throughout.

Back in the iTunes charts, an No.1 courtesy of Stranger Things. A great track but she has more than just RUTH to offer. Legend, there will never be another.

Madonna was the first Kate Bush

Bump

Running

I also got to see her residency in London 2014. We really lucked out and got great seats. Best show I've ever seen or probably will see.