Kate Bush: The Legacy of a Woman who brought High Drama to Pop music.
Kate Bush is the greatest female artist in the history of Pop music, bar none. Her fans are so rabid that they even rival hardcore Beatles enthusiasts. The Internet is absolutely swamped with various houses of worship that celebrate her singular sound and unique persona. I will not bore you with her full blown biographical details, as that is what All Music and Wikipedia are for. What I will do however is recommend what I feel to be her finest recorded output...
Firstly, Kate's first album "The Kick Inside" is in many respects her best. The musical talent that shines through on this record is unheard of in a teenager outside of Mozart. Beautiful and majestic cuts like "Moving" and "Kite" are full of such infectious melody and catchy little beats, that one is surprised that they were not equally as successful as the epic and highly dramatic "Wurthering Heights." Probably the strangest cut on this album by this very strange artist would have to be "Them Heavy People," which leaves absolutely nothing at all to the imagination.
I must skip ahead to "The Dreaming," which is the underrated masterpiece in Kate's musical catalog. This is the crucial turning point for Kate, as this is when she began producing everything herself and was safely tucked away tinkering in her then newly established home studio, which is essentially where she recorded all of her future albums. "The Dreaming" really is a nightmare set to music, and includes such frantic numbers like "Sat in Your Lap" and "Suspended in Gaffa." One wonders at what point exactly that the 19 year old who brought us "The Kick Inside" somehow transformed into the twenty-something with such a singular and intense vision, because while her first record was keen on dramatics it also lacked the darkness found in abundance on this album. The final cut on "The Dreaming" entitled "Get Out of My House" was actually a vague musical tribute to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."
My third and final album recommendation by Kate Bush is the most obvious choice, and I am referring to "Hounds of Love." Not only is there something eerily seductive about the music on this record, but the album artwork itself evokes a similar quality, as Kate gazes upon the listener from the album cover while embracing what appear to be two well bred dogs. Quite strange, but there is no question about this image being very inviting as well. My favorite cuts are "Cloudbusting" and the title cut "Hounds of Love." It is here where Kate Bush mingles the high drama and nightmares so beautifully that she would never produce a future album even remotely coming close to rivaling it. And while it is nice that she made a bit of a comeback with long term fans in 2005 with "Aerial" after a full twelve years absence from making records, and I recommend the enchanting "Joanni" in particular. However, I am of the opinion that her greatest work is included on those three albums that I have briefly expounded upon, as they chart an interesting evolution of one of the most individualistic artists in the history of Pop.
THE HOUNDS OF LOVE ARE POSITIVELY HAUNTING HER! BARK! BARK! BARK!
Firstly, Kate's first album "The Kick Inside" is in many respects her best. The musical talent that shines through on this record is unheard of in a teenager outside of Mozart. Beautiful and majestic cuts like "Moving" and "Kite" are full of such infectious melody and catchy little beats, that one is surprised that they were not equally as successful as the epic and highly dramatic "Wurthering Heights." Probably the strangest cut on this album by this very strange artist would have to be "Them Heavy People," which leaves absolutely nothing at all to the imagination.
I must skip ahead to "The Dreaming," which is the underrated masterpiece in Kate's musical catalog. This is the crucial turning point for Kate, as this is when she began producing everything herself and was safely tucked away tinkering in her then newly established home studio, which is essentially where she recorded all of her future albums. "The Dreaming" really is a nightmare set to music, and includes such frantic numbers like "Sat in Your Lap" and "Suspended in Gaffa." One wonders at what point exactly that the 19 year old who brought us "The Kick Inside" somehow transformed into the twenty-something with such a singular and intense vision, because while her first record was keen on dramatics it also lacked the darkness found in abundance on this album. The final cut on "The Dreaming" entitled "Get Out of My House" was actually a vague musical tribute to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."
My third and final album recommendation by Kate Bush is the most obvious choice, and I am referring to "Hounds of Love." Not only is there something eerily seductive about the music on this record, but the album artwork itself evokes a similar quality, as Kate gazes upon the listener from the album cover while embracing what appear to be two well bred dogs. Quite strange, but there is no question about this image being very inviting as well. My favorite cuts are "Cloudbusting" and the title cut "Hounds of Love." It is here where Kate Bush mingles the high drama and nightmares so beautifully that she would never produce a future album even remotely coming close to rivaling it. And while it is nice that she made a bit of a comeback with long term fans in 2005 with "Aerial" after a full twelve years absence from making records, and I recommend the enchanting "Joanni" in particular. However, I am of the opinion that her greatest work is included on those three albums that I have briefly expounded upon, as they chart an interesting evolution of one of the most individualistic artists in the history of Pop.
THE HOUNDS OF LOVE ARE POSITIVELY HAUNTING HER! BARK! BARK! BARK!
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