Over the stretch of the last 40 or so years Madonna has been the most commercially successful female artist, but I think the most successful artistically is Kate Bush.
Kate was a prodigiously gifted youngster, The Man With The Child In His Eyes was written when she was 16, and exploded into national consciousness with Wuthering Heights. Much mocked for its unusual style and Kate’s dancing it has endured as a classic based on the Emily Bronte novel of the same name.
I really tried with nineteenth century literature. I have read the Brontes (I studied Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for A level – I mean if you are going to study a Bronte novel surely not this one) and tried Austen, Shelley, Wells and Dickens. I really do not like them. I appreciate that it is my loss and they are good stories. I love watching a TV adaption of a Dickens novel (though anymore of A Christmas Carol would be at least five too many) or an Austen but the language of the novels is so stultifyingly dull. I make an exception for the Sherlock Holmes stories – though that is getting towards the twentieth century and Wilkie Collins (even then the TV versions are better of Collins).
Kate’s first album has a strong female theme – it is called The Kick Inside and also includes a track called Room For Life. Themes she would return to with This Woman’s Work. I love her second album, Lionheart, which is not as famous as others – it is an album about a happy, fantastical England.
(The Bronte sisters – literary giants)
Never Forever includes famous tracks like Babooshka (a shot from the video below shows why Kate was a fantasy figure for a generation of men who liked intellectual pop stars) and Breathing about the dangers of plutonium escaping.
There was the difficult fourth album called The Dreaming – the mystical world of the Native Australians (Rolf Harris played digeridoo), it was not an easy album and commercially unsuccessful. Several years later Kate released The Hounds of Love, famous for Running Up That Hill, The Big Sky and Cloudbusting. One side of the vinyl album was a track of a dying person looking back on their own life – a bit prog rock, but not in Kate’s hands. For the Bush novice this is the album to listen to.
Two more albums followed, and I would really like to recommend Moments of Pleasure (if Wuthering Heights wasn’t so good this would be the track I have on the list). The words and the emotion are truly affecting.
Kate took a long period off to raise her son, a human thing to do, but depriving the world of many potential spellbinding pieces of music. Luckily she has returned and is making music again.
Kate Bush does not get the credit that she deserves, she is a titan of British music. Totally love her – great musician and a wonderful human being.
Wuthering Heights
Playlist:
- Wuthering Heights
- Kite
- The Man With the Child in His Eyes
- Symphony In Blue
- Wow
- Oh England, My Lionheart
- In Search of Peter Pan
- Hammer Horror
- Babooshka
- Army Dreamers
- Breathing
- Sat In Your Lap
- The Dreaming
- Running Up that Hill (A Deal With God)
- Hounds of Love
- The Big Sky
- The Ninth Wave
- The Sensual World
- This Woman’s Work
- Candle in the Wind
- Moments of Pleasure
- The Song of Solomon
- The Red Shoes
- Constellation of the Heart
- King of the Mountain
Five Miles Out 