| Name | Kate Bush |
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| Background | solo_singer |
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| Birth name | Catherine Bush |
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| Born | July 30, 1958Bexleyheath, Kent, England |
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| Instrument | Vocals, piano, keyboards, bass guitar, guitar, violin |
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| Voice type | Soprano (early career), Mezzo-soprano (later career) |
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| Genre | Art rock, is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years. Bush was signed by EMI at the age of 16 after being recommended by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. In 1978, at age 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights", becoming the first woman to have a UK number-one with a self-written song. She was also the most photographed woman in the United Kingdom that year. |
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Released in September 1980,
Never for Ever saw Bush's second foray into production, co-producing with Jon Kelly. Her first time as a producer was on her
Live On Stage EP, released after her tour the previous year. The first two albums had resulted in a definitive sound evident in every track, with orchestral arrangements supporting the live band sound. The range of styles on
Never for Ever is much more diverse, veering from the straightforward rocker "Violin" to the wistful waltz of hit single "
Army Dreamers".
Never for Ever was the first Kate Bush album to feature synthesisers and drum machines, in particular the
Fairlight CMI, to which she was introduced when providing backing vocals on
Peter Gabriel's third album in early 1980. In November 1980, she released the Christmas single "
December Will Be Magic Again", which reached number 29 in the UK charts.
September 1982 saw the release of The Dreaming, the first album Bush produced by herself. It was also a major departure for Bush, being initially composed on rhythm machine rather than piano, with songs extensively revised and rebuilt in the studio, rather than merely arranged there. With her new-found freedom, she experimented with production techniques, creating an album that features a diverse blend of musical styles and is known for its near-exhaustive use of the Fairlight CMI. The Dreaming received a mixed critical reception in the UK at first. Many were baffled by the dense soundscapes Bush had created, and some critics accused the album of being over-produced. In a 1993 interview with Q, Bush stated: "That was my 'She's gone mad' album." The album's title track, featuring the talents of Rolf Harris and Percy Edwards, stalled at number 48, while the third single, "There Goes a Tenner", failed to chart, despite promotion from EMI and Bush. The track "Suspended in Gaffa" was released as a single in Europe, but not in the UK.
Bush was in her early twenties when making the album and tended to look outside her own personal experience for sources of inspiration. She drew on old crime films for "There Goes A Tenner", a documentary about the war in Vietnam for "Pull Out The Pin", and the plight of Indigenous Australians for "The Dreaming". "Houdini" is about the magician's death, and "Get Out Of My House" was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's film of Stephen King's novel The Shining.
Hounds of Love Era and The Whole Story
Hounds of Love was released in 1985. Because of the high cost of hiring studio space for her previous album, she built a private studio near her home, where she could work at her own pace.
Hounds of Love ultimately topped the charts in the UK, knocking
Madonna's
Like a Virgin from the number one position.
The album takes advantage of the vinyl format with two very different sides. The first side, Hounds of Love, contains five "accessible" pop songs, including the four singles "Running Up That Hill", "Cloudbusting", "Hounds of Love", and "The Big Sky". In August 1985, NME featured Bush in a "Where Are They Now" article. "Running Up That Hill" reached number 3 in the UK charts and also re-introduced Bush to American listeners, climbing to number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1985. The second side of the album, The Ninth Wave, takes its name from Tennyson's poem, "Idylls of the King", about the legendary King Arthur's reign, and is one continuous piece of music. The album earned Bush nominations for Best Female Solo Artist, Best Album, Best Single, and Best Producer at the 1986 BRIT Awards. In the same year, Bush and Peter Gabriel had a UK top ten hit with "Don't Give Up", and EMI released her "greatest hits" album, The Whole Story, for which she recorded the single "Experiment IV" and provided new vocals and a refreshed backing track to "Wuthering Heights". Bush won the award for Best Female Solo Artist at the 1987 BRIT Awards.
The Sensual World and The Red Shoes
The increasingly personal tone of her writing continued on 1989's
The Sensual World, with songs about unexpressed and unrequited love ("Love and Anger" and "Never Be Mine", respectively), and the pressures on modern relationships ("Between a Man and a Woman"). One of the quirkiest tracks on the album, touched by Bush's
black humour, is "Heads We're Dancing", about a woman who dances all night with a charming stranger only to find out in the morning that he is
Adolf Hitler.
The Sensual World went on to become her biggest-selling album in the US, receiving an RIAA Gold certification four years after its release for 500,000 copies sold. In the United Kingdom album charts, it reached the number two position.
In 1990, the boxed-set This Woman's Work was released and included all of her albums with their original cover art, as well as two discs of all single B sides recorded from 1978-1990. In 1991, Bush released a cover of Elton John's "Rocket Man", which reached number 12 in the UK singles chart and in 2007, was voted the greatest cover ever by readers of The Observer newspaper. She recorded "Candle in the Wind," as the single's b-side. 1990 also saw the one song Kate produced for another artist, Alan Stivell's "Kimiad," on his album "Again."
The Red Shoes was released in November 1993. The Red Shoes features more high-profile cameo appearances than Bush's previous efforts, including contributions from composer and conductor Michael Kamen, comedian Lenny Henry, Prince, Eric Clapton, Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, Trevor Whittaker, and Jeff Beck also donated their talents to the recording. The album gave Bush her highest chart position in the US, reaching number 28, although the only song from the album to make the US singles chart was "Rubberband Girl", which peaked at number 88 in January 1994. In the UK, the album reached number two, and the singles "Rubberband Girl", "The Red Shoes", "Moments Of Pleasure" and "And So Is Love" all reached the top 30. That same year, the film The Line, the Cross & the Curve, written and directed by Bush, and starring Bush and English actress Miranda Richardson, used six of the songs on the album.
The initial plan had been to take the songs out on the road (though a new tour did not transpire), and so Bush deliberately aimed for a live-band feel, with less of the studio trickery that had typified her last three albums and that would be difficult to recreate on stage. The result alienated some of her fan base, who enjoyed the intricacy of her earlier compositions, but others found a new complexity in the lyrics and the emotions they expressed.
This was a troubled time for Bush. She had suffered a series of bereavements, including the loss of her favoured guitarist
Alan Murphy, and her mother Hannah. The press often viewed her as an eccentric recluse, sometimes drawing a comparison with
Miss Havisham from
Charles Dickens's
Great Expectations. In reality, she was trying to give her young son a normal childhood, and needed a quiet place for her creative process to function. After living for many years on Court Road, Eltham, southeast London, the couple and their son currently have two homes: a £2.5 million house in
East Portlemouth on the
Devon coast
Bush's eighth studio album, Aerial, was released on double CD and vinyl in November 2005.
As on Hounds of Love (1985), the album is divided into two sections, each with its own theme and mood. The second disc, subtitled A Sky of Honey, features thematically related songs linked by the presence of bird song. The album's cover art, which seems to show a mountain range at sunset over a sea, is in fact a waveform that represents birdsong. All the pieces in this suite refer or allude to air or sky in their lyrical content. A Sky of Honey features Rolf Harris playing the didgeridoo on one track, and providing vocals on the track "The Painter's Link". Other artists making guest appearances on the album include Peter Erskine, Eberhard Weber, Lol Creme, and Gary Brooker. Two tracks feature string arrangements by Michael Kamen, performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra. A CD release of the single "King of the Mountain" included a cover of "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye.
"King of the Mountain" entered the UK Downloads Chart at number six on 17 October 2005, and by 30 October it had become Bush's third-highest-charting single ever in the UK, peaking at number four on the full chart. Aerial entered the UK albums chart at number 3, and the US chart at number 48. Bush herself carried out relatively little publicity for the album, only conducting a handful of magazine and radio interviews. Aerial earned Bush two nominations at the 2006 BRIT Awards, for Best British Female Solo Artist and Best British Album.
In late 2007, Bush composed and recorded a new song, "Lyra", for the soundtrack to the fantasy film The Golden Compass.
Musical style
Bush's music is eclectic, using various styles of music even within the same album. Her songs have spanned across genres as diverse as rock, pop,
alternative and
art rock. The musical instruments used in her songs and the way instruments are played, commonly differs from the American norm. Many of her songs have a melodramatic emotional and musical surrealism that defies easy categorisation. It has been observed that even the more joyous pieces are often tinged with traces of melancholy, and even the most sorrowful pieces have elements of vitality struggling against all that would oppress them.
Bush is not afraid to tackle sensitive and taboo subjects. "The Kick Inside" is based on a traditional English folk song (The Ballad of Lucy Wan) about an incestuous pregnancy and a resulting suicide; "Kashka from Baghdad" is a song about a homosexual male couple; Out magazine listed two of her albums in their Top 100 Greatest Gayest albums list. "The Infant Kiss" is a song about a haunted, unstable woman's almost paedophile infatuation with a young boy in her care (inspired by Jack Clayton's film The Innocents (1961), which had been based on Henry James's famous novella The Turn of the Screw); and "Breathing" explores the results of nuclear fallout from the perspective of an unborn child in the womb. Her lyrics have referenced a wide array of subject matter, often relatively obscure, as in "Cloudbusting", which was inspired by Peter Reich's autobiography, "Book of Dreams", about his relationship with his father, Wilhelm Reich, and G. I. Gurdjieff in "Them Heavy People", while "Deeper Understanding", from The Sensual World, portrays a person who stays indoors, obsessively talking to a computer and shunning human contact.
Comedy is also a big influence on her and is a significant component of her work. She has cited Woody Allen, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and The Young Ones Her songs have occasionally combined comedy and horror to form dark humour, such as murder by poisoning in "Coffee Homeground", an alcoholic mother in "Ran Tan Waltz" and the upbeat "The Wedding List", a song inspired by François Truffaut's 1967 film of Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black about the death of a groom and the bride's subsequent revenge against the killer.
Live performances
Bush's only tour took place 2 April – 13 May 1979, after which she gave only the occasional live performance. Several reasons have been suggested as to why she abandoned touring, among them her reputed need to be in total control of the final product, which is incompatible with live stage performance, a rumour of a crippling fear of flying, and the suggestion that the death of 21-year-old Bill Duffield severely affected her. Duffield, her lighting director, was killed in an accident during her 2 April 1979 concert at Poole Arts Centre. Bush held a benefit concert on 12 May 1979, with
Peter Gabriel and
Steve Harley at London's
Hammersmith Odeon for his family. Duffield would be honoured in two later songs: "Blow Away" on
Never for Ever and "Moments of Pleasure" on
The Red Shoes. Bush explained in a
BBC Radio 2 interview with
Mark Radcliffe that she actually enjoyed the tour but was consumed with producing her subsequent records.
During the same period as her tour, she made numerous television appearances around the world, including Top of the Pops in the United Kingdom, Bios Bahnhof in Germany, and Saturday Night Live in the United States (with Paul Shaffer on piano). On 28 December 1979, BBC TV aired the Kate Bush Christmas Special. It was recorded in October 1979 at the BBC Studios in Birmingham, England. As well as playing songs from her first two albums, she played "December Will Be Magic Again", and "Violin" from her forthcoming album, Never for Ever. Peter Gabriel made a guest appearance to play "Here Comes the Flood", and a duet of Roy Harper's "Another Day" with Bush.
In 1982, Bush participated in the first benefit concert in aid of The Prince's Trust alongside artists such as Madness, Midge Ure, Phil Collins, Mick Karn and Pete Townshend. On 25 April 1986 Bush performed live for British charity event Comic Relief, singing "Do Bears... ?", a humorous duet with Rowan Atkinson, and a rendition of "Breathing". Later in the year on 28 June 1986, she made a guest appearance to duet with Peter Gabriel on "Don't Give Up" at Earl's Court, London as part of his "So" tour. In March 1987, Bush sang "Running Up That Hill" at The Secret Policeman's Third Ball.
On 17 January 2002, Bush appeared with her long-time champion, David Gilmour, singing the part of the doctor in "Comfortably Numb" at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
Video projects
Bush has appeared in many innovative music videos designed to accompany her singles releases. Among the best known are those for "Running Up That Hill", "Babooshka", "Breathing", "Wuthering Heights", and "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", and "Cloudbusting", featuring actor
Donald Sutherland, who made time during the filming of another project to take part in the video. EMI has released a few collections of her videos, including
The Single File,
Hair of the Hound,
The Whole Story, and
The Sensual World, as well as an abridged concert video of her 1979 tour
Live at Hammersmith Odeon.
In 1993, she directed and starred in the short film, The Line, the Cross & the Curve, a musical co-starring Miranda Richardson featuring music from Bush's album The Red Shoes, which was inspired by the classic movie of the same name. It was released on VHS in the UK in 1994 and also received a small number of cinema screenings around the world. Overall it was a critical failure. In recent interviews, Bush has said that she considers it a failure, and stated in 2001: "I'm very pleased with four minutes of it, but I'm very disappointed with the rest." In a 2005 interview, she described the film as "A load of bollocks."
In 1994, Bush provided the music used in a series of psychedelic-themed television commercials for the soft drink Fruitopia that appeared in the United States. The same company aired the ads in the United Kingdom, but the British version featured Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins instead of Bush.
Several collections of Bush's music videos have been released on VHS, most notably The Single File, which contained videos predating the Hounds of Love album; Hair of the Hound, containing videos concerning that album; and The Whole Story, a career video overview released in conjunction with the 1986 compilation album of the same title. In late 2006, a DVD documentary titled Kate Bush Under Review was released by Sexy Intellectual, which included archival interviews with Bush, along with interviews with a selection of music historians and journalists (including Phil Sutcliffe, Nigel Williamson, and Morris Pert). The DVD also includes clips from several of Bush's music videos.
On 2 December 2008, the DVD collection of the fourth season of Saturday Night Live including her performances was released. A three DVD set of The Secret Policeman's Balls benefit concerts that includes Bush's performance was released on 27 January 2009.
Movie projects
In 1990, Bush starred in the
black comedy film
Les Dogs, produced by
The Comic Strip for
BBC television. Aired on 8 March 1990, Bush plays the bride Angela at a wedding set in a post-apocalyptic version of Britain. While Bush's is a silent presence in a wedding dress throughout most of the film, she does have several lines of dialogue with Peter Richardson in two dream sequences. In another
Comic Strip Presents film,
GLC, she produced the theme song "Ken", which includes a vocal performance by Bush. The song was written about
Ken Livingstone a former mayor of London, who at the time was working with musicians to help the
Labour Party garner the youth vote.
She also produced all the incidental music, which is synthesizer based. Bush wrote and performed the song "The Magician", in a fairground-like arrangement, for Menahem Golan's 1979 film The Magician of Lublin. In 1985, Bush contributed a darkly melancholic version of the Ary Barroso song "Brazil" to the soundtrack of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. The track was scored and arranged by Michael Kamen. In 1986, she wrote and recorded "Be Kind To My Mistakes" for the Nicolas Roeg film Castaway. An edited version of this track was used as the B side to her 1989 single "This Woman's Work". In 1988, the song "This Woman's Work" was featured in the John Hughes film She's Having a Baby, and a slightly remixed version appeared on Bush's album The Sensual World. The song has since appeared on numerous television shows, and in 2005 reached number eight on the UK download chart after featuring in a British television advertisement for the charity NSPCC.
In 1999, Bush wrote and recorded a song for the Disney film Dinosaur, but the track was ultimately not included on the soundtrack. According to the winter 1999 issue of HomeGround, a Bush fanzine, it was scrapped when Disney asked her to rewrite the song and she refused. Also in 1999, Bush's song "The Sensual World" was featured prominently in Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's film "Felicia's Journey". "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" is on the soundtrack for the 2007 British romantic comedy film Starter for 10.
Collaborations
Bush provided vocals on two of Peter Gabriel's albums, including the hits "
Games Without Frontiers" and "Don't Give Up", as well as "
No Self-Control". Gabriel appeared on Bush's 1979 television special, where they sang a duet of
Roy Harper's "Another Day". She has sung on two Roy Harper tracks, "You", on his 1979 album, "The Unknown Soldier", and "Once", the title track of his 1990 album. She has also sung on the title song of the 1986
Big Country album
The Seer, the
Midge Ure song "Sister and Brother" from his 1988 album
Answers to Nothing,
Go West's 1987 single "The King Is Dead" and two songs with
Prince – "Why Should I Love You?", from her 1993 album
The Red Shoes, and in 1996, the song "My Computer" from Prince's album
Emancipation. In 1987, she sang a verse on the charity single "
Let It Be" by Ferry Aid. She sang a line on the charity single "Spirit of the Forest" by Spirit of the Forest in 1989. In 1995, Bush covered George Gershwin's "
The Man I Love" for the tribute album
The Glory of Gershwin. In 1996, Bush contributed a version of "Mná na hÉireann" (Irish for Women of Ireland) for the Anglo-Irish folk-rock compilation project
Common Ground: The Voices of Modern Irish Music. Bush had to sing the song in Irish, which she learned to do phonetically. Artists who have contributed to Bush's own albums include
Eric Clapton,
Jeff Beck, David Gilmour,
Nigel Kennedy,
Gary Brooker, and Prince. Bush provided backing vocals for a song that was recorded during the 1990s titled
Wouldn't Change a Thing by Lionel Azulay, the drummer with the original band that was later to become the KT Bush Band. The song, which was engineered and produced by Del Palmer, is available for download and will be on Azulay’s upcoming CD.
Bush declined a request by Erasure to produce one of their albums because "she didn’t feel that that was her area".
In 2010, Bush provided vocals for Rolf Harris's cover of a traditional Irish Song entitled "She Moves Through The Fair". Harris who described the collaboration the "best thing I’ve done" is unsure of how to release the track.
Influence
From the 1980s onward, it has become almost standard for individualistic female singer-songwriters to be compared to Bush by the media. She has been noted as an influence on female artists such as
Tori Amos,
Björk,
Alison Goldfrapp,
Nerina Pallot,
KT Tunstall,
Lily Allen,
PJ Harvey, and
Florence Welch, in addition to acts as diverse as
Muse, and
Bloc Party.
Paula Cole named Bush as an influence while accepting the Best New Artist Grammy in 1996.
Ariel Pink wrote a tribute song for her titled "For Kate I Wait" on the album
The Doldrums. The
trip-hop artist
Tricky has said about Bush, "I don't believe in God, but if I did, her music would be my bible".
Marc Almond chose "Moments of Pleasure" as one of his 10 favourite songs on Radio 2 in June 2007, saying that the song had a profound influence on him when he was combating drug addiction in New York in the 1990s. OutKast's Big Boi told CNN in July 2010 that one of his goals was to work with Bush. "Kate Bush -- that's my dream collaboration," he says adamantly. "I'd do a whole album with Kate Bush. I'm looking for her right now." In November 2006, the singer
Rufus Wainwright named Bush as one of his top ten gay icons. Outside music, Bush has been an inspiration to several fashion designers, most notably
Hussein Chalayan.
Many artists around the world have recorded cover versions of Bush songs, including
Charlotte Church,
The Futureheads (who had a UK top ten hit with a cover of "
Hounds of Love"),
Placebo,
Pat Benatar,
Hayley Westenra,
Jane Birkin,
Natalie Cole,
Ra Ra Riot,
Maxwell,
The Church and
Nada Surf. The British dance act
Utah Saints sampled a line from "Cloudbusting" for their single, "
Something Good". Artists such as Tori Amos,
Nolwenn Leroy,
Patrick Wolf and
Happy Rhodes have covered her songs in live performances.
Coldplay said their track "
Speed of Sound" was originally an attempt to re-create "Running Up That Hill".
Suede front-man
Brett Anderson has stated that "Wuthering Heights" was the first single he ever bought and mentioned "And Dream of Sheep" in Suede's song "These are the Sad Songs". British folk singer
Jim Moray also references "And Dream of Sheep" in his self-penned track "Longing for Lucy".
Progressive death metal act
Novembre also covered "Cloudbusting" on their album
Novembrine Waltz. In 2009,
John Forté released a hip hop version of "Running Up That Hill". In 2010,
Theo Bleckmann has been performing his work
Hello Earth! The Music of Kate Bush and plans to release the project as an album in 2011.
Discography
;Studio albums
The Kick Inside (1978)
Lionheart (1978)
Never for Ever (1980)
The Dreaming (1982)
Hounds of Love (1985)
The Sensual World (1989)
The Red Shoes (1993)
Aerial (2005)
;Compilation albums
The Whole Story (1986)
This Woman's Work (1990)
See also
List of Kate Bush awards
References
Further reading
Vermorel, Fred and Judy, Kate Bush: Princess of Suburbia (1980) Target Books
Vermorel, Fred, The Secret History of Kate Bush and the Strange Art of Pop (1983) Omnibus Press ISBN 0.7119.0152.X
Cann, Kevin and Mayes, Sean, Kate Bush: A Visual Documentary (1988) Omnibus Press ISBN 0-7119-1039-1
Muskens, Helena; Racké, Quirine, Come Back Kate. Snow White Films. Involved TV Channel: NPS. 2007
'I'm not some weirdo recluse' (The Guardian, 28 October 2005)
This Bush's mission finally gets accomplished (National Post, 22 December 2005)
Two Musicians who have worked with Bush describe her working style and non work personality
The Illustrated Collector's Guide to Kate Bush, 2nd Edition, published by Collector's Guide Publishing. A complete guide to everything Kate Bush. Includes albums, CDs, DVDs, books and other collectibles. It's complete up to Aerial.
The Bush era: Leafy lady Kate Bush's musical family tree sprouts cover versions and young seedlings by Marke B. and Irwin Swirmoff for the San Francisco Bay Guardian 15 July 2009
Withers, Debroah Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory . Hammeron Press, 1 March 2010. ISBN 0-9564507-0-9.
Thompson, Graeme Kate Bush: Under the Ivy. Omnibus Press, 1 May 2010 ISBN 1-84772-930-4
External links
Official website
Kate Bush News & Information
Category:Kate Bush
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Category:Ivor Novello Award winners
Category:English people of Irish descent
Category:People from Bexleyheath
Category:People from South Hams (district)
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Category:1958 births
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