Goblin Tears

The Kick Inside, Never For Ever and The Hounds Of Love are my favourites, but Kate is so diverse and talented that it's not surprising people are picking out different albums as her masterpieces. Hounds is generally regarded as her finest, but I could never single one out.

glastonelle

I never knew there was a Kate thread. Thank God.

Kate =

Goblin Tears

Gaws, I can't stop watching this video. And to think this music Goddess does her own choreography, so young and oh so tender.

squonk

Not sure how I'd survive if Hounds Of Love album didn't exist.

Guybrush

My favourite albums is her early three. I know Kate's full artistic control of her own music was not achieved until The Dreaming, but that album is a little dark and dense for me. Similarly, while I like Hounds of Love, this album and later lacks some of that simple, pure and powerful beauty of Kate just singing songs behind her piano which is something she does more on her earlier albums. I also think her later 80s albums suffer a bit from a very 80s production.

This is all relevant though. There's not a weak album here It's Kate Bush after all, the most interesting female artist ever in the history of popular music. The first time I heard her music and saw her videos, I didn't know how to react. Was it beautiful or silly? Was it brilliant or ridiculous? The brilliant thing about Kate, at least early Kate, is that it's a little bit of both. She's so hard to define, for example how she manages to be a young, potent sex symbol who's completely unafraid of being herself with all her weird (and beautiful) faces while being an incredibly gifted and sophisticated artist and songwriter. The complexity of her personae coupled with the uniqueness and beauty of her voice made me fall in love with her almost instantly as soon as the initial confusion was laid to rest.

One of the most brilliant artists ever!

I see people here typically recommend starting out in the middle of her career. I would say start out with The Kick Inside, her first album, and work yourself up from there. Kate has made one of the most impressive debut albums in history so why not just start with that? To grasp the enormity of this album, she was signed by EMI at the age of 17. A couple of years later, she releases The Kick Inside. Those who are familiar with the album know that for a teenage girl to make such an album is nothing short of amazing.

From there onto Lionheart, but more so Never For Ever, there is a real sense of development. The Dreaming and Hounds of Love are radically different from the early works. There's an interesting stoy underlying all this as, initially, England and the rest of the world doesn't know what Kate is either. Is she a pop singer, sex symbol and a singles maker or is she a serious "album artist"? Why does she make music? So, start from the beginning and see how she develops through her career would be my recommendation

Here's one of my favourites from her debut (done for a TV show) :



edit :

She had a lot of help for the choreography for Wuthering Heights actually .. But yes, she is mesmerizing. Both in this and the "original" video

__________________
Something Completely Different

khfreek

I got Hounds of Love first, and I dug it but it didn't blow me away. Then I listened to this song... it might be my new favorite. It gives me chills every time I listen to it. I totally feel the love you have for her now Jackhammer

__________________
last.fm

starrynight

I think I like the white dress video even more (done for the British release), nicely done music video. The song was appreciated in Europe and Australasia, but apparently not so much in America.

I've always liked Wuthering Heights from when I first heard it in the late 70s on the radio, it's hard to forget when you first heard it maybe. It has a very expressive yearning quality, which is maybe particularly feminine. While it has a nostalgic feel for me I like it because I think think it is just high quality music. Other superb melodies from that period include The Man with the Child in His Eyes, In Search of Peter Pan, The Infant Kiss and The Kick Inside.

Cuthbert

Happy birthday Kate.

60 today.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...bout-kate-bush

Let's enjoy all things Kate Bush in this thread.

Chula Vista

When Sherri was really young she could ape Kate to a tee. I wish I had an MP3 of her singing "The Man with a Child in his Eyes". Your minds would be blown.

Mike also has a great voice. He'd have to turn his back when he sang but he could do Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" so incredible it would bring tears to your eyes.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Cuthbert

Kate's music is really good.