Kate Bush

I remember seeing Kate Bush perform ‘Wuthering Heights’ on Top of the Pops. Both the song and the singer struck me as being a bit weird at the time. Over the next decade or so I got used to her voice, her songs and her various appearances on TV etc. I neither liked nor disliked her. She was sound in the background – the breeze in the trees. She was silent and invisible for a number of years and I never even noticed.
Then I got a copy of Aerial and the knowing dawned that she was an incredible, unique and mighty talent.
A couple of the tracks on Aerial are a bit cringy, like Bertie – the reason for her period of silence and invisibility – but I can forgive her anything. There’s the mini-opera of domestic erotic fantasy, Mrs Bartolozzi, via songs featuring Rolf Harris or birdsong, to the trancey, panoramic epic, Nocturn, to name but a few reasons. Once, I listened to ‘A Coral Room’ for over half an hour before it occurred to me that my player was on song repeat. Aerial’s a kind of diptych. It’s on 2 discs, the songs on the second one being thematically and temporaneously linked. Yes. OK, it’s a concept album.
Anyway, it would be fair to say that I became a wee bit obsessed with Kate Bush for a while and discovered a whole, beautiful body of work. It’s difficult to hear another rising female artist, like Florence and the Machine, and not shrug my shoulders and say: ‘Kate Bush has already done all that – and better.’ I’ve no hesitation in having her share a pedestal with Joni Mitchell as the greatest female musical artists ever.
One thing about her career is that much of it is tinged with a garish 80’s aesthetic; from the shoulder pads and make-up to the production on her songs – but I can forgive her for that as well.