Kate Bush
English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer; sister of John Carder Bush.
Her talent was precocious. "The Saxophone Song" and "The Man With the Child in His Eyes" were recorded as demo tapes when Kate was still at school. The first album, The Kick Inside (1978), caused tremendous media interest and is still the public's favourite. Her voice, criticized at the time, was small and childlike, the range erratic, if impressive. Since then it has improved enormously, deepening and gaining power and flexibility, until now it is a great asset, individual and capable of both subtle and stunning effects.
Just like a photograph,
I pick you up.
Just like a station on the radio,
I pick you up.
One of the band told me last night
That music is all that he's got in his life.
So where does it go?
Surely not with his soul.
Will all of his licks and his R'n'B
Blow away?
He thought he was gonna die,
But he didn't.
She thought she just couldn't cope,
But she did.
We thought it would be so hard,
But it wasn't...
It wasn't easy, though!
Ooh, he's a moody old man.
Song of Summer in his hand.
Ooh, he's a moody old man.
...in...in...in his hand.
...in his hand.
You stood in the belltower,
But now you're gone.
So who knows all the sights
Of Notre Dame?
She has always freely admitted being like a little girl in many ways, and furthermore, happily presumes she'll still be that way in her dotage. It's certainly still a factor on Aerial , both in the track "Bertie" itself and in the memories and reminiscences that cobweb some other songs. But compared to the darker corners of the mind sometimes mined in earlier songs, the new album seems a much sunnier affair: an enduring image I took away from it — not necessarily a lyric, though it might have been — was of windows flung wide open, their curtains billowing out in the breeze, a room's long-dormant dust stirred into life again.
Kashka from Baghdad
Lives in sin, they say,
With another man,
But no one knows who.
Who said anything about it hurting?
It's gonna be beautiful
It's gonna be wonderful
It's gonna be paradise.
We're building a house of the future together.
(What would we do without you?)
It's not easy for me
To give away a secret —
It's not safe…
There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it.
You might feel it and just not show it.
See how the child reaches out instinctively
To feel how fire will feel.
See how the man reaches out instinctively
For what he cannot have.
The pull and the push of it all.
When we got on top of the hill,
We saw Rome burning.
I just let you walk away.
I've never forgiven myself.
You came out of the night,
Wearing a mask in white colour.
My eyes were shining
On the wine, and your aura.
Kate will never be an academic artist, drily applying intellectual music theory to the delight of a handful of peers, forging into new areas for the sake of "progress". Her style is personal, individual, impressionistic. Like Delius, her music will always flow from poetic necessity, breaking from the confines of tradition because expression demands it. I just hope that she will have the confidence to follow her instincts and not be discouraged by the music press, who in the main are baffled and annoyed by her uniqueness. Unable to pigeon-hole her music, they turn instead to ridicule and condescension to fill the pages. Which is a disservice to the British public who, to their undying credit, have made Kate Bush such a popular success.
Gabriel before me
Raphael behind me
Michael to my right
Uriel on my left side
In the circle of fire.
Nobody else can share this.
Here comes one and one makes one,
The glorious union.
Well it could be love,
Or it could be just lust,
But it will be fun.
It will be wonderful.
Emma's come down.
She's stopped the light
Shining out of her eyes.
The album Never for Ever came next and starts in happy mood, with a summer night of a cha-cha-cha tribute to a new-found hero, "Delius". The philosophic All We Ever Look For creates a remarkable and rare mood of reassurance and upbeat resignation, a Bush specialty . . . The end comes in the horrifying "Breathing", a vision of the nuclear holocaust through the eyes of an unborn child.