Bandsplain - Kate Bush with Ann Powers

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Author and critic Ann Powers maps the pioneering path of one of pop music’s most inventive, mystical, and artistic trailblazers: Kate Bush. Follow Ann Powers on Twitter at @annkpowers, and find her latest book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music wherever fine books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplain? Welcome to Bandsblane. I am your host, Yossi Salick. This is a show where brilliant journalists come on to explain cult and iconic artists to me an idiot. Today's episode is about Kate Bush. If you've never heard Kate Bush, get it the fuck together, mate. Here is what Kate Bush sounds like.

like. My guest today is Ann Powers, NPR's music critic, an author of the books Weird Like Us, My Bohemian America, and Good Booty, Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul, and American music. Welcome to the show, Anne. I'm so excited to be here to talk about my spiritual guide through life, Kate Bush. Okay, so Anne, tell me, let's just get started. What do you love so much about Kate Bush? Why is she so special to you? One thing that really, really has attracted me to Kate Bush for my entire listening life since I was a teenager and she was a teenager. She's a little older than me, but is that she, you know, creates her own worlds on her recordings, but she also created her own musical world, art world, a comfortable

situation for her to make music. And she had some good fortune that allowed this to happen. But I also think the way she's done her career is really a model for being able to, you know, follow your crazy muse into the stratosphere supported by musicians, producers, you know, people around you that let you dream your dream. Who has dreamed their dream as dreamily as Kate Bush? No one. I would say literally no one. I want to talk a little bit about like Kate Bush as like, ingenue, you know, because I think when to start out, right, like you kind of mentioned it just now, she was literally a teenager. She was. When her career started. How did, how did her career start? So, Kay Bush was born in 1958 in South London to a very artistic family. Both of her brothers are

artists, Patty Bush is a musician. He's on most, maybe all of her records. And her parents encouraged to pursue any kind of creative path she wanted to. They must have been disappointed when you went off to sing. I don't think so, no. I think they thought I was a bit foolish, but I thought it was right. You know, she was growing up in the 60s, so, like everyone who liked popular music in the 60s, very influenced by the Beatles,

came of age at a time when beetle-esque rock was morphing into progressive rock. At 16, she, had recorded a bunch of demos, like 30 songs or something. She was already, you know, totally prolific songwriter. I had to leave school and I had to do it. And I'm very glad I did. Taught herself piano, you know, wow. A bit of a prodigy and a family friend. There was a friend of my brothers called Ricky Hopper. New David Gilmore of Pink Floyd. And slipped David the tape of Kate's songs and he was very impressed. So then he came along in her.

me and he put up the money for me to make a proper demo with arrangements and selected songs. And we took it to the company. Two or three years go by where David Gilmore's trying to figure out, can he get this teenage girl a record deal? What would that mean? The record labels kind of feel like she's too young. She does a few other things. She studies dance. She studies mime.

eventually Gilmore makes a tight three-song demo, and she is signed. And she makes her first album The Kick Inside, which produces a number one hit. A number one hit like no other number one hit before it. And that song is still maybe Kate Bush's most famous song. It's called Wuthering Heights. A strange and lovely and fascinating song, Kate. Okay, let's hear Wuthering Heights. Let's just start this party off with a bang.

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That was Wuthering Heights off Kate Bush's first album, The Kick Inside. Do you know that throughout the world, but especially in England, Kate Bush fans, there is a day, like similar to the Michael Jackson Thriller Day that happens where everybody performs the thriller dance where women go out into the fields and perform the dance she performs in that video, which is just her dancing in a field, by the way. It's incredible. Oh, have you gone? No, I've never gone.

to admit, just as I've never seen Kate Bush live, but that's another story. I think we have to go to the field next time. Yes, I want to go. If you guys have not seen the music video for Weathering Heights, you literally need to do yourself in favor and Google it. Just pause this right now. Go Google it because it is, I think it'll situate you well into, like, right away what Kate Bush is, how different and interesting Kate Bush was.

And I think in this video, Anne, would you agree? Like, this is like where it becomes very apparent and important and it is her whole career of visuals and a brief time in the beginning when she toured. But like you said she studied dance and she also studied with a professional choreographer. But he was also like a like a big mime type guy, Lindsay Kemp, who taught David Bowie, right, for Ziggy Stardust. Yes, exactly. I mean, she wanted to be a performer like that. I'm not saying like Bowie. but to move like that.

Some have said that the reason Kate Bush, who is and was a huge, massive star in England, and I think in most of Western Europe, as far as I know, why she never made it in the U.S., is because she came on the scene before music videos were really a thing, and her singles alone just didn't fit any radio format, and the fact that she was a multimedia artist was confusing to people. Totally.

She did perform legendarily on Saturday Night Live. Will you please welcome Kate Bush? And if you find those clips, they're pretty amazing, extremely theatrical. She never toured. She's always resisted touring and performing live. Really, she is a time traveler from the future because she is that artist that was, I think, think born for the internet age. You know, she is starting as a total musician, a total visual artist, total dance artist, a literary

artist. She's doing it all in every song and on every album. This worked in England, though, and that has to do with the scene she kind of came out of, which is progressive, progressive rock, Prague, rock. We got to talk about the Prague a little bit. We can't avoid it. And I feel like that something I was noticing, because you nailed it, right? MTV didn't even launch to like 1981. That was like a couple of years after this. But also the UK just has like or had, I can't speak to it now, but used to have like 80 different shows that you could go on and perform live music on. They were so into it. And like you go top of the pops. You go on this guy's show, that girl's show. Like it was like so many different opportunities to present your craft visually like you were saying. And Kate Bush took every opportunity. I won't be. I won't be. push back a little on your internet thing, though, because I'm going to say, like, and this is maybe

me, crotchety, shakes fist at Sky again. But it's like, yeah, like, I mean, if someone gave her the money to do these things, which they would have only done back then, she could have broke me on the internet. But now, unless you're doing, like, TikTok dances and you go viral, then they might come give you money because you already have three million followers. So there's, like, I don't know, it's like, she's such like a weird anomaly of, like, a time where, like, they would sign you. to EMI based on music like this, and it would become really popular. I can't see that happening now. I mean, I guess the only internet phenomenon I can make is Jacob Collier.

You be feeling like you're running your way. Mm-hmm. Totally. This is like polymath, you know, sort of classical-ish, kind of jazz-esque, plays a lot of instruments, does a lot of collaboration, you know, across the ether. and she's sort of in that same category where she is rock. She's definitely a rock artist. I'm going to just claim rock for her and her for rock. But she's so connected to classical music.

She has a song on one of her early albums called Delius, named after that composer Delius. She was very influenced by classical music. Theater. I hear a lot of Broadway, sort of like vaudeville. in what she does. But that, you know, that's the Prague thing too. And it's that moment where Prague is discovering synthesizers and becoming new wave and merging

and morphing into new wave. It's the same moment that, you know, produces Pink Floyd's The Wall and then very soon after produces the movie The Wall starring Bob Geldof from the Boontown Rats. And like all these crazy artie people walk. around, London, just miming at each other, I think, is what they were doing. It was just a vibe back then. It was just a vibe. I'm really struck by Wuthering Heights, A, knowing that she wrote it when she was like

17 or 18, which is like crazy. But also, even more than that, like, the fact that the musical blueprint of who she is as an artist has been there since day one and only, like, it gets better, maybe more refined, maybe evolves in different ways. But it doesn't ever change. Yep. I mean, you can hear in the song Heathcliffe, it's me, Kathy. Like, she's already taking on a character.

She always takes on characters. Her songs are, I don't know, but I don't want to say never because I can't speak to every song, but it doesn't seem like she really sings about herself in the first person in that, you know, confessional female singer-songwriter way. She's constantly taking on characters and of all genders, like, you know, of all ages. People are just so full of poetry. They say it all the time, you know, and they're the most amazing. Amazing phrases that people will come up with that just aren't covered.

And that's like something that's her whole career, right? Yes, yes. And also the voice, you know, the literal voice, that swooping, whooping voice. I do deliberately heighten it just because it's what this song calls for. But it's comfortable as well. Apparently, as a child, she studied karate and had the nickname, E! iconic.

Because she had that. That was how she yelled when she was, when she was crying. So it was, you know, organic. But she said in an early interview that she was captured by the love story that Emily Bronte had, you know, put forth in Weathering Heights. And I read the book. You read the book later? Yeah, I read the book before I wrote the song because I needed to get the mood properly. She discovered that Bronte shared her birthday, July 30,

and felt very compelled to write this song, was overwhelmed with the creative urge, sat down, was like, okay, I'm Kathy. And she had also been called Kathy as a young girl. Is this you? No, that's Kathy in Wuthering Heights. That was who I was in that particular song. Sure, Kate, yeah.

And she said, Kathy is a ghost. I had to find a voice that could be a ghost, and out of that came that whale. And it's like from the very beginning she was sort of possessed by this spirit that then she carries forward, even as she is, as you're saying, morphing and changing at all times. The voice was really just to create a mood. The whole song is like Kathy is a spirit at that point. When Johnny Mitchell wrote both sides now, she was reading the book Henderson, The Rain King on a plane, read the first. couple of pages, which start with an image of the main character looking down at the clouds from the other side in a plane, put the book down and wrote both sides now. So both Joni Mitchell

and Kate Bush wrote their breakthrough songs after deciding that a classic work of literature that they were reading wasn't as good as the song they could write. So I absolutely love it. This song is kind of a huge moment, just like historically, because she's the first female artist in history to hit number one with a self-written song in the UK. I don't know about the U.S., which is kind of crazy. Well, think about the progress scene we were alluding to before. That was definitely a sausage party. It was such a male space, you know, Pink Floyd, Ellen Parsons Prize. I'll Stewart, Wishbone Ash, you know, I don't know, you could kind of like move over and see King Crimson in there and then head on over toward craftwork. That's a lot of pasty dudes we're talking about, you know. I feel safe calling Kay Bush a genuine progenitor. I don't think there really are predecessors to what she did. However, there are some other women who emerge at this time who, you could say they're,

They're kind of like floating on clouds nearby, nearby her cloud, right? So you've got Lennelovich, you know, she's doing, who did Lucky Number. You know, you have Nina Hagen, who's German, who's doing, you know, doing theatrical music. You have the B-52s in the U.S. who are like wearing their crazy wigs, you know. Sure. So it's happening. And then you also have like the women in punk, like the slits. Even if you look at bow wow wow.

There is like this kind of theatricality that's emerging that a lot of women are exploring. I wonder, too, though, if those, I mean, again, this is like a leap, but it's like they were all aware of Kate Bush, right? Because Kate Bush had a number one single. So, like, I was watching a copy at Kate Bush BBC documentary. It's funny what you were saying, like, Tricky is on there. They have like everyone in this documentary and it's mental. It's like, Elton John and like just everyone. But Tricky's like, Tricky says he's like, you know, I love her because you can. can't track any of her influences. Like, I can't pinpoint who her, like, musical mother and father are.

Yes. I can't figure out musically, artistically, who are mother and father is. And that's so real. But then also you have Viv Albertine is also in the dock. And she's, like, talking about how much the slits loved Kate Bush. Yeah. This melody went so, meandered on and this high-pitched voice warbling and dropping. But I was absolutely spellbound.

She really was just hitting, like, this, I don't know, And obviously Johnny Liding, we just talked about punk. He's like a huge, huge Kate Bush fan. Yeah. And you can hear it in Public Image Limited, too. The sounds that emerge on those from, you know, as she moves, well, we're going to get to the dreaming. But, you know, by the time she makes The Dreaming, her fourth album, she's just invented this sound that just informs everything. Everything art punk that follows it all the way up to Radiohead.

Like, I don't think Radiohead would exist without Kate Bush. That's my opinion. there a song, another song off of the kick inside that you want to play that you feel like maybe like, I don't know, shows the point of like you can't pinpoint her influences, like she's so singular. There's a song that I think we could play where we could show how she's influenced by more than just music and how even from the beginning she's thinking of the world of sound and she's thinking of sound as a world that she inhabits. And that song's called Moving.

Amazing. And I suggested that we listen to this song because of how it starts. It starts with a sample from an album called Songs of the Humpback Whale, which is from the early 70s and is, in fact, an album of whale sounds. This is something that, you know, throughout her career, Kate is looking to the natural world for inspiration. She's imitating the sounds of animals. She's invoking animals.

She's invoking trees, you know, geological shifts. She samples bird song much later in her career. But here we have some whales. And that's where Kate's looking. You know, she might be looking to the Beatles, but she's also looking to the humpback whale. A true, a fairy spright princess. Okay, here is moving.

That was moving, which is very moving. And again, as we were talking about, like, her love of dance. So there she is of singing about the importance of... Of literal movement, yeah. How moving is an essential part of her being, what she's doing. And, you know, is it about sex? Is it about dancing? It could be about both.

Oh, you know, who knows? Kate Bush knows. The movement thing, I watched in this stuff. He mentioned the interview the choreographer Lindsay Camp. And he talks about her at like 1617 when he's teaching her. And I think this is like, we'll get into it later because I think this is like a little kernel of like explaining her as an artist where he was like she was so painfully shy. Like he had to kind of help her open up.

And he was expressing so much, probably more than most people would express with their mouths. And it suddenly dawned on me that there was a whole new world of expression. But then once she felt a little bit comfortable, like she was off to the races. Right. As she's playing a part even in dancing, she can be so much more free and open. But then, you know, she's actually quite shy. Like she's a timid person. Now I'm myself.

And when I'm performing, I'm assuming different roles. I'm performing. I'm projecting. You can really see that, I think, in those are really. performances, Yassi they were alluding to, that you can find all over YouTube. Yeah. Like, her eyes are very, like, she is fixing her gaze, you know. And I don't know, did you take acting lessons as high school or anything like that?

And they kind of tell you to do that, you know, to get over your stage fright by, like, focusing on a point. So you're not like, oh, my gosh, I'm performing, you know, you can really see that. And I was so scared. I really was. But once you're up there, it's different. You know, you just forget all about it because they're there to see you

and you have to give it to them. I love to watch her dance, but this is a long way from like the free-form dancing of the hippie era. This is very choreograph, very, you know, often proto-robot kind of moves. Yeah. You know, and then she immediately is adopting these characters

and going beyond gender, going beyond the human. And you could see that as also a way of not being confessional. Totally. You know, I mean, one thing I love about her songs is that they're very emotional and personal, deeply personal, but they're not, you know, autobiographical in a conventional way. I think that was something that appealed to me when I came across the kick inside in a bin at a rummage sale as a high schooler and had never heard her and put on that. record and was like, what is this? Oh my God. Because I too was like a poetry reading, theater studying, you know, would be artist and who felt awkward in most situations. And here she was

leading me, guiding me, giving me a frame and a reason to live. No big deal. It's a small reason to live. NBD, Kate. I love this, like, idea that you can convey so much emotion while playing the character in music. Because it's not really like, that's not what people really associate with music. It's, like, kind of like, nowadays expected to always be, like, deeply personally autobiographical. But Kate Bush, I read some quote with her where she said, I don't find myself that interesting. She was really shy. And she was like, oh, I find another interview I saw with her where they were like, what inspires you?

you. And she was like, people. I'm just really inspired by other people. You can really draw from people's minds and the situations people are in. They're always in different situations with different mental things going on inside them. Yeah, people reading. I love an artist who reads. And I think that's something she also shares with Polly, Gene Harvey. An often cited quote of Kate, she mentions, she says, the only women you hear on the radio are women doing this kind of like soft confessional autobiographical music, men get to do rock. I think she says men's music intrudes. I want to intrude. And I love that idea. Like for all of her shyness as a person, when she enters the sphere of art making, she's big. She's king. She intrudes. Yeah. I mean, my arm hair is standing up.

I'm just very, I'm going to cry. I want to ask a quick question before we move on to the next album, which I think is a little more blip in the radar as far as the English album goes. Speaking back to like the musical landscape of late 70s, early 80s, England, I read that she was like a little bit criticized for being so privileged, Even though it's not like she was like some like super, you know, billionaire daughter or something. But just because at that time, like you were saying, like punk and pub bands and all this. And I think it was like a real focus on being a hard scrap, you know, which we have to this day.

Totally. And I'm interested in that. Like, do you know much more about that? She was known as a queen of the suburbs. There was an early book about her written by the English journalist Fred Vermeerald that talked, sort of. starts with him waxing fantastic about her, you know, her as this like kind of niatic nymph of the suburbs. And yeah, I mean, that was like, that's, that was not what the avant-garde was supposed to be about. Again, you know, I mentioned progressive rock and how punk was a reaction to Prague, right?

So, and Prague was considered to be like bloated and too, you know, too self-indulgent. And it's spinal tap, right? And what is spinal tap? This is a top to what we use on stage, but it's very, very special because if you can see, the numbers all go to 11. Spinal tap is the tiny stonehenge, right? You know, it's the it's the theatrics that have gone so far that they become ridiculous. And that is connected to an idea of class, right? the kind of artists who could afford to, you know, indulge in the newest technology,

indulge in these crazy costumes and these sets is one who has a lot of privilege. And yes, punk was a reaction against that. But I think in retrospect, we can see that what Kay Bush was doing, while sonically and artistically, sonically and visually and aesthetically, it is in line with progressive rock and with art rock. She is still cutting to the core of something, and she is still being radical. And it is in her will to intrude, as she says, as a woman, that she is in her own way, kind of punk. You know what I mean?

Like, she is not Susie Sue. She is not, you know, hanging out with a Bromley contingent and, you know, officially being a punk. But she is just as shocking in her own way. You know what I mean? It's like she is, I once wrote about her as an ultra femme, you know, that she goes. Totally. That she goes so far into the feminine that she comes out the other side. Yeah, I think it's like a weird criticism. I think it's because she wasn't rallying against X, Y, Z that she was able to make this sort of expansive music. And I hate, I'm going to slap myself in my own mouth for saying this word. But like, she was like kind of like an empath, right?

Like her whole thing was like, processing the struggles, the human struggles of like what she saw in the world, whether it was through books or just through like simply observing the people around her and like, or whales or donkeys. So like, you know, I don't know. I don't know that that would have been possible if she had been. And that's, it was a mantle for different artists, but like being angry about a specific.

personal thing, that leads to a different kind of music. Yeah, I mean, you know, there are elements of protest on her early albums. The song Army Dreamers from her album, Never Forever, is an anti-war song. The song on The Dreaming called Pull Out the Pin is her imagining herself a soldier in hand-to-hand combat. But, you know, think about that anti-war protest. It feels very 60s. You know, there's also this kind of generational slippage that happens with her. And I think that's partly because she had these older brothers who were very influential on her. And also, her mentor was David Gilmore from Pink Floyd. Her producer was Andrew Powell on those early records who had produced Alan Parsons Project and people like

that. I think you might have been in Alan Parsons Project. So she's like hanging out with these dudes from the 60s in the early 70s. And she's got these older brothers. So she's kind of like not of her moment, you know? And then she's also, everything about her is again, time traveling. Her visuals are either hearkening back to Victorian times or classic Hollywood, you know. Her look is, you know, kind of she's dressing in these costumes that, you know, look like they came out of Casablanca or something like that. Or Casablanca meets the Witches of Eastwick or something. I don't know. Totally. And she's not. fitting in with her moment. But I think that's one reason why she became not just a novelty artist,

but a major artist, because she insisted on building her own time and space. So while I think, you know, when she emerged to some, she felt a little bit sort of almost stuffy or old-fashioned. And that was partly because she was perceived as a suburban girl, not a rebel girl, exactly. I think the time slippage that we see and hear and her art kind of like allowed her to age so beautifully and to become a major artist and not just confined to one musical era. Right. She was, you know, very vehement about her own sound, about her own privacy, about, you know, growing on her own terms and in her own time. And, you know, especially for women artists, I think you have to be self-protective in that way to, uh, to sustain yourself.

Yeah. And well, speaking of self-protecting also, when she puts out 1979's Lionheart, she also makes her own publishing company and her own management company. So it's like, this bitch is like 20 or like 21 or something at this point. I just like simply cannot wrap my mind around like being that. Even when you watch interviews with her from that time, like the amount of self-possession in the way she answers the questions, like it's crazy. And if they said it was rubbish, I'd think about it.

But if I didn't think it was rubbish, then I'd still carry on with it. You have to believe in yourself. Yeah, I know, I know. She was born for this role. I just invoked Lady Gaga. How weird. She was born that way. Because I think that is a person who actually compares well to Kate Bush.

Oh my God, totally. The way that Gaga's done her career. Totally. Similarly, very self-possessed. similarly a huge vision, similarly, you know, creating her own situation as much as she could. And I think that's what you need to do if you want to be this kind of multimedia artist and you want to really rule what you do. So yeah, Kate. So she makes Lionheart, it's her sophomore slump, as they say.

It's still a wonderful record. It's in the same vein as Kickinside. And she's often said that she just said. didn't have enough time to go to the next level, as it were, with it. But there's some great songs on it. And, you know, to your point, Yossi, about her already figuring out the music industry, my favorite cut on the record is the single, Wow, in which she is singing about the temptations of fame, the problems of fame, the joy of performance. She's already, like, you know, doing meta-commentary on stardom. And she's like 20 years old.

I just, okay, we're going to play wow, and I need you guys to understand that this song was a single on a major label release. I just want you to keep that in mind while you're listening to it and that it charted. I mean, again, the UK is a magical and different land, but still, okay, this is wow. That was wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, if you will. One thing I love about that song is it shows in the chorus she hits this really low, low note. And I love to think about that low note in contrast to her high note on Wuthering Heights. That is her range. She has such crazy vocal jobs, too. I mean, I think we haven't even talked about just her voice. And the freedom that she must have felt as a young woman. with that voice, you know, being able to just do those mad acrobatics that she could do.

Yeah, I mean, she has such a singular voice. I mean, it makes me think of like, you know, Kate Bush has a lot of musical heirs. But obviously, Joanna Newsom in terms of having a unique, especially early Kate Bush voice. Because I think Kate Bush's voice gets deeper and more resonant in a different way later in her career. But these early songs, like it's, you're like, oh. Oh, yeah, no, definitely. And I think there's something about the vocal range and the fanciful mind, you know, and the kind of imaginative range. And I recently had reason to go back and listen to early Joni Mitchell Records.

I've mentioned Joni a few times and was very struck by how the very early Joni, the pre-breakthrough Joni records, similar. Again, it's like that crazy range, that sort of like fairy tale, fantasy. I'm going to, you know, make my own, I'm going to write my own myth, mythos here. That's all happening. And I just wonder if feeling that kind of musical facility is, you know, if it frees your mind in other ways. I don't know. Yeah. That's a really, that's a really interesting point. It's funny that you say that about Joni. We did the Joni episode with Jessica Hopper. And admittedly, I didn't know a lot about Joni Mitchell. And I was, like, very fascinated. And I think the world-building thing, like, I think Joni is obviously, like, heralded as, like, she invented personal singer-songwriting, which is, like, true of what I learned of some of her albums. But there's also Joni albums that are also, like, Kate Bush, like, so observational, right? Like, she is doing the same thing of singing about the plight of, or the thoughts and feelings of the people that she observes. So it's like they do have that in common.

Yes. Oh, totally. and being just like a step outside of their music while being also so emotionally incisive, you know? And Joni has a cool that Kate never has, you know? Kate never goes cool. Kate as if goes icy. She's such a theater kid.

I mean, you know, I mean, we needed her. I just have to say we desperately needed her. Like, who else do we have back in those days? early 80s. Yes, we had all of new wave music, I know, but we just needed that costume drama that she gave us. And on Lionheart, it's so, it's so prevalent. She's taking inspiration from so many different texts, you know, there's a song inspired by Peter Pan, there's a song inspired by the popular play Arsenic and Old Lace. There's a song called Hammer Horror that was inspired by the, you know, gaudy, cheap hammer horrid.

movies of the 60s. Has an insane music video also. Yeah. So, you know, she's taking in a lot culturally. And maybe that's another reason. Wow. I feel like I'm in, Yasi, I feel like you're my therapist right now because I've had a breakthrough.

And it is that I, as a burgeoning culture critic, like, here's Kate. She's kind of a culture critic, too. She's like, here's what I got out of these texts. I'm going to make them into something new, which is kind of what a critic, a good, great critic tries to do. Once again, we've drawn parallel between Ann Powers and Cape Push and U.S. spiritually connected. I like the thing about the cool, though, because I think, again, I was really struck

by that with her, just like relearning about her and watching some stuff where I was like, not only did she like, I don't even think it occurred to her to think about being cool. Like, I don't even think that's a framework that she, like, ever thought about or worked within. I don't think she was reactionary in any way to anything that was going on besides like directly like you're saying, like processing reaction up to things. And I think, you know, Joni Mitchell, while I think she had a different situation where she kind of was probably forced into being cooler than she might have been by having, you know, the American media was like relentlessly there's awful. You know, and like, you know, I think, I'm sure they have different.

they're made up of different stuff obviously. And producer Dylan, I actually talked about this earlier today, and she pointed out that my Ares Moon today is feisty. Because she was saying that like, oh, it's interesting they both, as artists, like, think of themselves, like, so singularly and don't want to be considered with other female artists. Yes. I try not to listen to female artists too much just because, for me,

it would be too easy to relate with them. And Dylan was kind of being like, oh, that's like, you know, whatever. And I was like, well, I was like, I also, like, I get it. Like, what if you spent your whole time and life and effort, like, painstakingly creating this, like, interesting artistic world only to have someone come up and be like, you know, someone else does that? She's also a woman. Her name is Joni Mitchell. I'd also be like, the fuck does that have to do with me, you know? And I think Kate Bush said it more nicely and Joni Mitchell said it more bitchily.

but like they both were saying the same thing. They were just like, again, and so what? I find it extraordinary, the different perceptions that people do have of me. And I feel for my own sanity that that's something that is theirs and not mine. Well, I think you have to consider the precarity of women musicians throughout most of popular music history as far as, you know, how long their careers might last, what, you know, what they were being pressured to do in terms. of the way they looked, the way they presented themselves, their personal lives being under, you know, much greater scrutiny than, you know, and all musicians face this in the celebrity era, honestly, men too. But it's so much more intense for women. And I'm happy to say that

now I feel that women, musicians do acknowledge their female predecessors. Look, I've spent 30 years writing about music and countless times as a woman musician, been like, I'm not influenced by that woman that sounds so much like me. You know, I mean, it's just like that's, there's a kind of self-preservation involved in making that statement, which is really unfortunate. It's not unfortunate. I'm not saying, I'm not blaming anyone, but it has to do with the feeling of like, I'm alone here.

I'm not supported, you know, or, I think like in the case of both Kate and Joni, my main supporters are men, my main collaborators are men. I feel attuned to these men. And now you're trying to lift me out and say, I'm more attuned to a woman I've never met. Yeah, exactly. Reasonable, right? I guess that's where my thing comes in where it's like maybe my feminism is that you don't have to be a feminist just because you're a woman. Like, I might be.

But I think that's feminism in a nutshell, to me is like not all women have to be the same way. And if you don't want to consider yourself a female, artist above being an artist or whatever you don't want to do, more power to you, babe. Like, that's the freedom that I want for you. Well, and no, I totally hear you. I mean, of course, as a feminist, I, you know, would hope that any man, woman, a non-binary person would, you know, support equal rights for everyone. And if we say that's the essence of feminism, then great, you know.

But categorically defining someone, that rubs many artists the wrong way. You know, it rubs across lines of identity, even genre, whatever. And I think when you get these artists who are particularly dedicated to destroying categories, which is like what Kay Bush is all about, like destroying, intruding on, destroying, you know, just exploding, every category. Is it pop? Is it classical? Is it theater? Is it music? Is it spiritual?

Is it sensual? Is it is she a man, a woman, a beast, a computer, everything, you know? And so, of course, she doesn't want to be like, oh yeah, you're just a new Johnny Mitchell or whatever. When I was trying to think of possible influences on you, the name that kept coming to my mind was Johnny Mitchell. I wondered if you were a fan of Johnny Mitchell.

I admire her very much. I read an interview with her from like five years ago in a big music publication where the person still fucking brought up Joni Mitchell. And it's like literally let this woman live. Like can they, can you not? Anyways. But I will tell you, here's a little side note of trivia though. Interesting crossing. So Johnny Mitchell, you know, married to Larry Klein, the longest marriage and collaborative relationships she had in her life was with Larry Klein.

producer of many of her wonderful albums in the 80s and into the early, I think, right around the turn of the 90s. Larry Klein produces an album for Carr's vocalist and bassist Benjamin or at Peter Gabriel's studio mid-80s. And that's the same time that Kate is crossing paths with Peter Gabriel. So I just do have a fantasy, you know, of them being like maybe not in the same room, but maybe like walking down the same garden path one day and nodding at each other across a rosebush. Maybe they were just blasting sigs together in the alley. Right. They're probably like totally smoking out of the alley. But I do want to say one thing before we move on from Lionheart, which another thing that's going on by the time we get to Lionheart is that.

But she is starting to build this sound that's very much about eroticism. And now from talking about sex to talking about sex, Kate Bush is only 20 and the most amazing lady. Her unique song shot her to superstardom in only one year. There's a song called In the Warm Room where she is talking about sort of like she's painting this picture of this like incredibly seductive woman. It is like the most, it is like the most gynocentric vision. of sex. I was going to say, is the warm room

a vagina. Well, figure it out. Maybe. So, okay, last, last point before I move on, because I think it's a good bridge from also this vagina song and what you said about Joni. This is also the first album that Del Palmer works on, which is her, Kate's long time lover and collaborator.

And so maybe no coincidence that this. She's a delving into a very more sensual territory. Yes. She met Del Palmer when he was in a band with her brother that became her band, the KT. Bush band, before she had a record contract. And then when they made the first record, the producer brought in his own dudes to play on the record members of bands like pilot and Cockney Rebel, these English rock bands. But she gets her boys back. She gets her band back. And importantly, Del, who does, is, you know, he's also an engineer.

So he's helping her figure out that sound. And this becomes major when the other primary relationship in her life forms, which is her relationship to the Fairlight synthesizer. Oh, yeah, maybe. We're going to get there. We haven't talked about the fact, one of the most important things, which is the tour of life, which happens after these two albums, even though she had never played shows. She had just been playing on TV and she did this six-week tour, right?

Your concerts are more like Broadway musicals than rock shows. Yes, yes. And I can't say I know a ton about that because I never got to see her. But it was quite a theatrical event as far as I know. We thought how nice it would be to present something for people visually, as well as them coming to hear the music, give them a show that would hopefully complement the music and make it more enjoyable. Oh, there was magic.

There was dance, mime, theater. What I do know about it is that it really inspired a lot of people from this documentary that I was watching that went and saw it. I think Elton John was saying that like this, she like raised the bar for like visual presentation. Oh yeah. In a live show for everybody forever after that. And it was, you know, it's talked about as like she was grueling, but it's like it's six weeks. So I don't. But I guess it was really hard.

And also I think this is the one, this is a fun tid. And correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not sure if it's this tour. It must be because she doesn't tour again for 35 years. Yeah, it's this tour. Well, we've only done one tour, and that was a long time ago now in 79. She basically like ushered in the advent of the ear mic, the, you know, the headphone mic. Yes, in fact. Headband mic.

What do you call it? You know what? Oh, my God. You're totally bringing me back to my college days because the tour of life, there was a video made from these sessions. And I, Kate Bush obsessive at 18 or 19, went down to the local All Ages Club in Seattle called the Metropolis and was one of about 20 people who like went to the club night where they showed that video because we were never going to get to see her, which was a really

weird afflicting part of being an obsessive American Kate Bush fan. Like you just never were going to get to see her perform. But yeah, now it's all coming back to me and that video blew my mind. You know, she was also really interested in esoteric spirituality. And I think, you know, you see that. Right. And, you know, Sufism and, you know, various kinds of new age healing techniques. And you see this both.

both in the movements she's incorporating into her performances. And then also it's the subject of so many of her songs, like the song Them Heavy People, for example. Where she uses that aerobics mic when she performs it on Saturday Night Live. But that's a song about like opening yourself up to weird, esoteric spiritual practices. She's so fucking cool. So, yes, the tour. And also you already said this kind of.

but like 1980 is also right before her next album comes out is when she meets and collaborates with Peter Gabriel. And like you said, she meets the love of her life, the Fairlight, which is like, I guess the first or one of the first digital synths. Yes. So I think, Yassie, I shared this photograph with you that I found on the web of Kate and Dell Palmer. And I mean, attending a demo for the Fairlight synthesizer. and it is the ultimate of the cliche find someone who looks at you the way that Kate Bush looks at that Fairlight. I mean, it is just obsession. And what did the Fairlight give her? The Fairlight gave her the ability to be her own band.

I mean, as someone who had more freedom than most but still felt very limited and was being, you know, having to work with a producer. and not be her own producer, wanting to start, you know, producing her own albums. And here's this instrument that can replicate any instrument. And she dove in, but not right away. She dove in slowly because first we have never forever, which the fair light appears on, but it's not the dreaming, which is the ultimate fair light album. Yeah, this one just like she uses it, I think, on Babushka. Yes.

There's like a glass breaking samples. Yes. We should hear Babushka. Let's hear. We have some interesting stuff to talk about. Yes. Okay. This is Babushka.

That was Babushka. A great word also. Just putting it. And you know, here's another song where is Kate telling a story in the third person about a couple who are estranged. You know, basically it's the Pena Colada song. Remember that song? It's that song Yeah, I was like

She can't possibly be referring to that song But you are That song Because that song is about like a married couple Who are kind of bored with each other And they each put a personal ad in the paper And then end up on a date with each other This song is the

Less Happy Go Lucky version of that In which a woman decides to seduce Her own husband as a test Of his faithfulness And he fails the test because he falls in love and lust with this exotic version of his own wife that she assumes. So it's this exotic grandma because babushka means grandma. Well, you know, this is where we get a little bit into the whole issue of cultural appropriation. And, you know, I think we can critique Kate Bush on this level.

I've thought about this a lot. It's painful for me to have to think any kind of question. questioning thought about Kate, but I think especially in the 21st century, we always really, we always need to question when, you know, a white English upper middle class woman assumes these other identities. I do believe she did the Cockney accent on that one. Yeah, the Cockney accent, the Australian accent, you know, I am an Asian man, you know, all of these different things she does. I believe she felt entitled to do this. because she maybe, you know, because she is an upper middle class person and that kind of entitlement we know is very common. I think this is also an outgrowth of her primary identity as a reader and consumer of art and culture and, you know, and a theater kid, as you say. But I'm not defending it. I'm raising it to say we do need to critique this aspect of what she does, you know.

Yeah, totally. I mean, this is like a thing. I think that we've talked about on multiple fans playing episodes. Even like, you know, we talked about on the Fugazi episode, the minor threat song, White Like Me, which Ian McKay now looking back is like, yeah, I would not have written that song again. But at the time, you know, like it was it was an intention that didn't translate properly. And like he takes full responsibility. And I think, you know, we can say the same for things that Kate Bush did. It's tricky, right, when someone's whole thing is taking on personas to know which ones are okay and which ones aren't. Absolutely. I mean, you know, Bowie can also be critiqued many times over for the same thing or even someone like Tom Waits, you know.

Why did Tom Waits sing in the voice of an 80-year-old black man? You know. Unclear. Because that was the dream he was trying. to put over on us. You know, that was the story he had to find a way into, but does he have a right to tell that story? This is a really important question for all of us to ask, and it comes up with Kate as well. But, you know, she is always looking for ways to expand her vocabulary and not only in words, but sonically. And I think that is what's great about her is that she is going beyond,

language, you know, she's not, I adore Joanna Newsom, like truly, she's one of my favorite recent artists, but I do too. I love Joanna. I feel that, like, what Kate has that Joanna could do and, you know, may still do, is that she's just like getting into this, to sampling and rhythms and this other realm of world building. I, we keep using that phrase that, you know, makes her music. expansive. Totally. Well, and we had talked, this is like a little bit of a left term, but I do think

it's interesting that you had mentioned that your daughter told you that this particular song, Babushka, had a recent viral TikTok moment. It is apparently the soundtrack for many TikToks about tarot card readings, love potion making, spellcasting. It is part of witch talk, which how appropriate, you know, anyway in. Also, like, why that song? I agree with you. And Kate Bush is very appropriate for that. But, like, were I to sit down, I do not have a TikTok.

I am legally banned from TikTok for my age. But that's not the song I would have immediately chosen. I feel like she has much witchier songs and, like, maybe arguably better songs. Yeah. But I just, I want to know how the like 14 year old girl with her tarot cards like was like this song. I know. I do too. But I've been legally bound by my daughter to not speak any more about TikTok.

She said, mom, if you try, it's going to ruin the whole podcast. Okay. Well, I won't speak anymore on it. I want to talk about one more song from, well, I think we should talk about two more songs from here. We don't have to hear the whole thing, but you talked about it a little bit earlier. I think Army Dreamers is kind of an important song. Army Dreamers. Who ought to face up.

I do two. For two different reasons. One, I think it's a good illustration of Kate Bush's version of social commentary, which is unlike most other versions of social commentary. She is yet again inhabiting a character. And in this song, a kind of unstable. possibly Irish accent. I'm not exactly sure.

And it's a waltz. That's the other thing I think is important about it. It's a musical arrangement and just the structure of the song. It's like how often do you hear a waltz performed by a rock musician? And it is the story of a soldier who has been killed as a teenager. And it's quite a moving song, I think, you know. From the perspective of his mother, right? From the perspective of his mother.

But then it becomes, it becomes like food for thought, really, because, you know, the chorus is just like, it could have been a rock star, but he didn't have the money for a guitar. You know, all of these things he could have been, but then he didn't even make it to his 20s. It's, it gets me every time. Like, it's really effective, I think. Again, like, and the, how do I say this? Just like driving the point home of, like, Kate Bush's. is like ability to take on, like, personas. She didn't have children, you know.

She wasn't a mother. But she's able to really convey, I think, pretty convincingly the sentiment of a mother. Yes. And then speaking of mothers, there is the song that I really love goes up there with most insane also music. All of Kate Bushes. I don't know why I'm qualifying. But the song is called breathing. It is, according to Neil Gaiman, who was also in this documentary, literally everyone on Earth is in this documentary.

He says it's a fetal song, a song from the perspective of a fetus. Nobody writes songs like that. It's utterly political and it's utterly female. And it's like, babe, what? But it's so good. It is from the perspective of a fetus. And simultaneously, it is a song about nuclear war, nuclear annihilation. And the inability to breathe or the fear that you won't be able to breathe that a child experiences being born,

then connected to the potential inability of all people to breathe if there is nuclear, Holocaust, nuclear disaster. And I have to tell you, when I was in high school, it's very 80s, by the way. It's very, well, I have to say, like, it's very kind of late 70s turn of the 80s. You know, my first political experience, my first activist experience was working for this organization called Target, Seattle, that raised awareness about the dangers of nuclear war. There's a nuclear plant, Hanford, in Washington State. But it wasn't so much about the plant. And it was, I recently went back and like, looked at this thing.

I was like, what was I stuffing envelopes for? It was actually about the threat of the USSR, like sending nuclear missiles to hit us or something, you know. And that is what we were living under during the Cold War all the way up to 1989, you know, when the Berlin Wall fell and then Glastonos was happening and things changed. This was something people felt. They felt it enough to organize huge protests. And in Europe, this was, you know, the Greenham Common women were chaining themselves to nuclear facilities. There was like huge activism around a nuclear war. So this is something that Kate Bush would have definitely been aware of and feeling.

I love how there's still nuclear weapons, way more now, way more nuclear weapons. And yet we've all just forgotten. And we're like, la, la. We're too busy, like going on TikTok, figuring out different ways to use babushka to notice nuclear annihilation now. Literally amongst other things. I want to play, let's play breathing, and then I need to ask you why the 80s were so insane. I'm here for you. Okay, this is breathing.

That was breathing. Okay, back to the 80s and why they were. truly the most insane decade I couldn't think of. And I think this is a nice little bridge, if you can explain to me, to get into the dreaming, which is arguably the most insane Kate Bush record. Absolutely. There's a ring in your mouth. I couldn't quite work that out, Kate. What is it? Oh, you need to look again if you think it's a ring. It's the zenith of insanity, at least, in terms of the Cape Bush catalog. Yes, absolutely. And her masterpiece, in my opinion. Oh, interesting. I think most people would say hounds of love, right?

Yeah, but they're wrong. I know. I fight them. True ones love the dreaming. That's all I can say. I love the dreaming. For many reasons, which we'll get into, but not least of which is the donkey.

Cosplay. Ah, yes. So good. Okay, so the dreaming comes out the year I was born. No coincidence. And Kay Bush finally is like, I don't need producers. I'm doing this one on my own.

Yes. Yes, yeah. I love this quote from Michael Lindsay, who was writing about the dreaming and the quietest a while back. And this is him talking about her discovering the Fairlight synthesizer or gaining access to it and what it did for her. He writes, Peter Gabriel introduced Bush to the Fairlight, the sonic equivalent of a Jedi being handed their first lightsaber. I think that is so right. Like this was the tool that, that connected her to the force. And there were only three of them in the UK at all when she got hers. So it's also really truly setting her apart as a musical innovator. And synthesizers are a big part of European pop, starting with craftwork, but also, of course, Brian Eno, Roxy Music. There's so, you know, also in classical new music, synthesizers are so important. Wendy Carlos, you know, this is all preceding Kate discovering the fairlight.

But that moment when she meets the fairlight, this imagination, this idea of what sound can be, what music can be meets an instrument that can make any sound. You know, it's a sampler, essentially. And then on the other end, you know, out of this meeting, I believe, comes the template for not only Bjork and what she does on later albums where she's, you know, using so many different samples. But also, I'm not saying K Bush invented hip-hop. I am not saying that. I'm just going to say that one more time. Blondy invented hip-hop.

Right, exactly. But, you know, she has influenced producers, and notably Big Boys talked about this a lot. But she's kind of showing what sampling can do. Totally. Big boy, number one, K. Bush stand, maybe more than anyone I've ever encountered. I think, okay, I was asking about the Aides being insane. And I think it ties into, again, now any person with a literal cell phone can make electronic music, you know, and sample. whatever. But this is like the slow introduction of personal use like electronics in general, right? And I think people went crazy. It broke people's brains and it broke the decade. Yeah, it did. And it broke music in a great way. You know, I didn't mention Gary Newman is another real innovator with synthesizers. But, you know, this is new wave. This is a new wave moment. And so it's not just.

about the sonic palette of pop music expanding infinitely because these tools are available to reproduce, cut, paste, distort sound. And we now have keyboards as the grounding instrument for pop, as guitars had been for the classic rock era. But also, the musicians who are exploring these sonic worlds are fascinated with technology, fascinated with. with futurism, fascinated with gender bending, identity bending, race, even, you know, I'm going to say like race bending, if you can say that. And they present themselves as cyborgian, you know? This is the sci-fi moment in popular music, much more so, I think, than the progressive rock era. But it's really the 80s when dreams become electric as Gary Newman said.

It's interesting I dream the body lifter It's interesting that you say that it became sci-fi right Because not in Kate Bush's hands It's still somehow It's still somehow like A Forest Nymph Nymph being doing witchcraft

Like even though it's so future It somehow doesn't sound sci-fi to me What I really settled on was an idea of The Monstrous You know I feel like this is the, this is the moment when she confronts the demonization of women, where she confronts the potential of becoming monstrous as a freeing act, or she, you know, lets herself get ugly,

or, you know, she really just challenges everything about what a woman artist can do. And she's not alone. I mean, there are definitely others who are pushing the boundaries in different ways, right? But the fair light and the sonic expansion she finds on the dreaming and the artifice that she embraces on the dreaming in a different way in a way that doesn't feel like musical theater but feels like a whole new realm is her exploding identity in ways that say, hey, you know, I can be monstrous. I can be outside. I can be huge, you know. And I also have to face what. that means, you know? This is the blood in the bloody chamber. You know, Angela Carter, the great English writer, did a very important feminist rewriting of fairy tales called The Bloody Chamber in which she kind of like said, what happens if you are a feminist and you confront these stories? What happens if you keep it as violent and, you know, absolutely brutal as the original tales, but you tell it

from a woman's perspective? And I feel that's kind of what Kate's doing here. She's like taking that on. Is that a little grandiose? I'm not sorry. The bloody chamber, also a vagina. No, it's not a grandiose. It's gorgeous. And can you point us to a song on the dreaming that you think is a good illustration of what you're talking about? Yeah, well, I want to start with the song that is about a particular kind of violent transformation and that is enlightenment.

This is not a song so much about gender. is really about the human, human and the spiritual. And also it's about the creative process. It's called Sat in Your Lap. And I chose this song because of that incredible gated drum sound in it, and also the percussive elements, because this is also where Kate starts to really explore a world of percussion that becomes super important throughout the rest of the rest of.

her work. She's exploring African percussion. She's exploring Irish percussion, which is a thing, by the way. It's not just penny whistles out there. And this is just to me the most evocative song about like trying to have a breakthrough of any kind and just being so frustrated. Also, finally, just when she says, just when I think I'm king, I must admit, you know, she's saying I'm struggling still, but when she says when I think I'm king, that to me is the moment when gender explodes in popular music for me. Damn. That's a very high praise.

Gated drums also extremely 80s. Let's hear sat in your lap. Okay, that was sat in your lap. And I just want to say, I too see the people working and see it working for them. And so I want to join in. you know what? I find that it does hurt me. I don't want to work. I don't want. You will never guess what inspired that song, though, or who? What artists? Guess what what artists inspired that song?

Boom time. Stevie Wonder. What? Which I fucking love, you know? I mean, I love, in fact, she wrote that song after she went to a Stevie Wonder show. So, you know, another incredible visionary world builder, sonic experimenter, overindulgent genius. That is just a connection, I treasured. Was she jealous? Is that like of his ability to do something? Or like how, in what way did he sing that inspire the song?

I think musically. I think more musically than lyrics wise. Okay. But on the other hand, I mean, if you think about where Stevie went in the 70s and like late 70s, secret life of plants. He was like out there. Things were crazy in Stevie's world during that time. And I think it just opened her up to new sounds. Sorry that this is the 15th time I'm saying this, but you have to go home and watch the music video for this. Literally, it's so nuts. The dancers and leotards and massive white dunce caps. It's just

I know. It's everything. I know. It totally is. And, you know, again, she's like, her relationship with her dancers throughout all these videos. And, you know, later she gets a little more narrative in her videos. By the time we get to cloudbusting, she's like, you know, Donald Sutherland is in there. And it's there telling a story. But I don't know. And I think it directly comes from what you were talking about, that experience of English entertainers having to figure out how to be on, like, top of the pops and shows like that. Totally. So you heard, well, you obviously, Ann Powers, but you, the greater listening audience, you hear in sat in your lap, like you hear the, the synth is. Yes. It's there. Yes.

Yes. And then there's a couple of other songs that we're not going to listen to in their entirety, but I feel like we would be remiss if we don't mention what the Fairlight is allowing for. The Dreaming, which she, tapped Percy Edwards to make animal noises with his mouth? Yes. She got Percy Edwards on there.

She has a couple of very famous Irish traditional musicians on this record. She has a tabla player on this record. She's just like going all over the place with the sound. But she's also doing things like back to her old tricks of just telling kind of movie script type stories. You know, like the song, There Goes a Tenor where she adopts. a perhaps unfortunate cockney accent. We got the job scientist. The shop shop for business.

And tells the story of a heist with her as the thief who is caught and in the moment, you know, has a kind of mystical experience as all the money kind of floats in the air. I think, you know, an explosion goes wrong and she's watching the money fall around her. You don't decide up. How are we not going to talk about her doing donkey singing, donkey noises, and get out of my house? Get out of my house, you know. Quite literally imitating a donkey. Transforming into a donkey, I think, is what's happening in that song.

It's very good. You know, fairy tale. It's a very fairy tale. It's like a total fairy tale story. We love the donkeys here on band. But that was the thing I think, for me, like why this was such an important record for me as a young person. And I already was totally indicate, by the way. Like, I had found the kick inside at the rummage sale at my,

at Our Lady of Fatima, my church rummage sale. And then subsequently sought out the following two records. But when I heard this record, I was a college kid who loved rock and roll, was writing about rock and roll already for my like local alternative weekly and obsessing on a new wave and punk music and particularly on women artists like Chrissy Hine from The Pretenders and Debbie Harry and the aforementioned women of the B-52s and and yet all of those women whom I loved you know most of their songs were still about like dudes you know they were. They were about love. They were about, I am attractive, I am not attractive, you know, or I'm trying to be attractive, or I am on the prowl, or I'm celebrating my sexuality. A great, you know,

that's all great and everything. But now here was this woman who was like writing about other things. And I was just like, yes, you don't have to be tied to this one subject of sex and love and your own attractiveness, which I felt like was such the theme of like every other song by a woman. I was like, Kate was like, you don't have to be hot. You can simply become a donkey. Exactly. And, you know, I remember listening to this record obsessively in this one house I lived in with two other young women when I was attending University of Washington. And my roommate was really obsessed with Bauhaus in the flat field, that record. And that record was about like vampires, you know, or, you know, it was about Bella Lugosi's dead. And so I was like, the guys can do it, you know, they can write songs about supernatural, fantasias.

Why not us, you know? Totally. Thank God, though, for Bella Lugosi's dead. Because if you've ever DJed, you know that's a clutch track that you can put on when you need to go to the bathroom. That's very long. Great song. Great song. This, okay, something we haven't talked about is that.

She also produced this album. Yes. Well, we did say that. But because she produced it herself, it took two years, which at that time was a long time. Meanwhile, in our year of the Lord, Rihanna put out an album in 2016 and people are like, hello, it's been five years. This, like, back then it was like, you need to put out an album every year. I'm like, what do you doing, babe? But she got to take her time because she was like, well, this is, I'm in charge.

Yes. Yeah. And I think that, you know, is so important. it's breaking the spell of the Beatles, you know, that had been on pop music for so long, and particularly British pop music, because the Beatles just churned them out, you know, for their short life as a band. And that was expected at that time. But then do you think that was also the moment when she starts to get the reputation

as the reclusive weirdo freak lady who never leaves her house? Your exposure here was almost non-existent. And part of it was the fact that that you didn't like to fly. You didn't really like to grant interviews. Totally. Yeah. Well, I think so because this album, well, two things happened, right? This album, A, she took two years, which was a big deal.

B, it didn't perform well the album. And the label had spent two years as two years of studio money, right? And they were kind of mad. And she, so she was like, well, I'll make my own studio. And she went and made her own studio. And you're fortunate enough that the studio is in your home so that you don't have to pay the studio time. This always works out real well. There's a really good quote from her around this where she's like, it's so good.

It's like, because this was her lowest selling album to date. It's so wrong. It was still. It was silver. It wasn't like no one bought it. And she says the main thing I heard was uncommercial, the label that the press, the record company put on it. but for an uncommercial record to go straight in at number three in the charts, seems ironic to me.

You tell them, Kate, fucking shade them. She was like, bitch, number three, really? Uncommercial? No, but it is, you know, that is, I'm glad you read that quote because we need to remind people that that Kay Bush was a massive star in English. She was not like your typical art weirdo. There were, you know, you were, Yasi, talking about what the 80s were like, since I did live through it. Every city had like their own art weirdos, you know.

They had their own favorite band slash performance artists slash, you know, person who would throw garbage at you or whatever, you know, was while doing an interpretive dance while wearing a pinafore. You know, that person existed in every city, I think in the world. during the 80s. But that wasn't who Kate was. Like, Kate was a pop Fium. She was Lady Gaga of UK. Yes, she totally

was. She totally was. She completely was. But minus the leotards and the skimpy outfits and no shade. Everybody has to do that now, I know. But you know, she wasn't presenting herself in that way. She was like... Not after the first album. Which one they made.

And not briefly. Yeah. Not briefly. Yeah. Not after like the, that, we didn't mention that before, but, you know, when she put out that first single, Wuthering Heights, there was this picture of her in a, like, tight pink t-shirt, and she insisted that it not be used as a cover and that the album cover, maybe it was the album cover for Kick Inside in England, that the album cover they used is this, it's a Del Palmer art piece, actually, that is her affixed to a wall in a... kind of a Japanese kimono outfit made into a kite. So like right there, yes, it's a very alluring image,

but it's a hell of a lot different than a chippy and a pink t-shirt, you know. She did not resist being presented as attractive. You know, she just is like, I'm attractive and I am literally a lion. Yeah. Well, she said, I think, about the first album where she was. she was like they all they cared about was like putting me in the leotard but they didn't ever talk about how I wrote everything and I played the you know like she was like very like why don't you talk about that part which like fair enough um exactly so anyway yeah dreaming um I read

I don't know Anne if you've read this um that's a huge fan I'm sure you have and also you're part of the media elite but there is there was a piece in the New Yorker by Margaret Talbot in 2018 when Kate Bush's box set came out. Yes. And there was just like one little part that it. There was a bunch of parts that I like. It's a great piece. But she's talking specifically about get out of my house.

And she, she's saying like, for all it suggested about how few fucks Butch gave when it came to getting radio airplay or charming people in any conventionally girlish way. Yes. I'm like, oh, that kind of like nails it, right? I mean, it's an interesting question. I'm sitting here agreeing with you. And then I also want to. challenge that and say, I think she did care, you know, and I think that's why she's not Diamonda Gloss, you know what I mean? And I adore Deamonda Gloss. I, another life-changing

artist for me. But, you know, like a genuine avant-garde artist whose work is so challenging that it will never hit the mainstream. That's not what Kay Bush is, you know. She's someone who also wants to write courses that rival the Beatles, you know. She's also someone who wants to be up on the top of the charts. And I think we hear that even more when she gets to Hounds of Love and she finds the sound that makes her truly commercial. Totally. She always knew what pop was for her.

Right. What pop, what in pop music worked for her. And that is what she refused to compromise, you know. Totally. Otherwise, she would have gone off and written, you know, I don't know, faux medieval motets or something. But she didn't do that. She had her biggest singles, you know, throughout the mid-late 80s and into the 90s

because she figured out even better what pop could be for her. Yeah. I always wonder about them. I'm like, did you, is it that she set out to make pop music and this is, the kind of pop music she puts out. Like, this is just like, like, I want to make paintings. I can only make these kinds of paintings because this is what pop music is to me. And it kind of feels like that, right? Yes, definitely. And I think, you know, I can see her more in context than I once could. I, you know, I as a diehard fan really clung to this idea that she's like completely singular. But now I can see how,

especially once you get to Hounds of Love and past Hounds of Love, you know, how she's being influenced and in collaboration with people like Peter Gabriel, how she must have been also aware of talking heads, you know, how other artists who are doing similar things form a kind of imagined community together, and she's part of that, you know. And Elton John, she, you know, that was one of her idols, Elton John. And what a wonderful late career thing for her that they duet together on her most recent record, 50 Words for Snow. We look so good together. Okay. So, Anne, why don't we play one more song off this album? And I think we both know what song we have to play. Yes, this song features one of many of four. Kate Bush's notable encounters with the animal world. In this case, her self-transformation into a donkey at the end of the song, Get Out of My House. Shall we hear it? It's a pretty

self-explanatory song, I think. Also, I just have to point out that this is a place where both producer Dylan and I converge on two main interests, which are love of donkeys and get out of my house. Just the idea of get out of my house. Okay, why don't we hear Get Out of My House by Kate Bush? That was Get Out of My House, a gorgeous title song, a beauty, really honestly a sick song, I have to say. No, totally. And I mean, it also shows the connection that Kate has to horror and horror movies. You know, she has an earlier song called Hammer Horror. That's based on the Hammer studio films. Its very name became synonymous with horror.

Hammer, the studio that dripped blood. She often either cites horror movies as inspiration or even like we'll take a little bit of dialogue from horror movies in her songs. And, you know, I think she really relates to the possibility of transformation that is inherent in horror. You know, she, she connects with that whole idea. And in this song, the force that is attacking the person is turning into a bird, a bat, the wind, you know, all these things. But then in the end, she does seem to transform herself into a beast that can scare off the force.

I just love that. I love that she feels that absolute metamorphosis within herself. Totally. I mean, the whole, like, the lyrics are so filmic. Like, by the time it gets to the fourth verse and she's like, this house is full of my mess. This house is full of my mistakes. This house is full of my madness. I'm like, okay, chills. I know. And maybe this is why she got the reputation for being kind of a crazy recluse, even though she was really just a total muso who liked to hang out with her family. Yeah, totally. Because that's what happens next. You know, she's, She releases a dreaming. It's not as successful as her previous releases. It is a cult favorite in the making. And I would say now in 2021, many people, including myself, feel it's her best album. But at the time, it didn't hit the charts.

The singles didn't really chart the way that she was used to. People thought she was out of her mind. And she retreated into her home life for a few years. after which she releases her most influential album. She recovered beautifully. I guess we're going to talk about that next. Totally. I must say that I think Robert Crisgow, the God,

he did like it when it came out. And we talked about him quite a few times on this show because what a legend. Always seems to know what to say. Did you know that Bob and his wife Carolla officiated our wedding? My husband's at my wedding. Sorry. Bob, you say. Well, shout out to Bob, who I did not know, officiated weddings, and your wedding.

Wow, okay, cool. I am feeling, you know, is jealous the right word, envious, just a few things. He's a great guy. And it's funny. Shouts to Bob. It's funny you should mention that he liked this record because Bob and I have a running joke of 30 years now or 25 or whatever, how long we've known each other, that anything I like, he hates. Usually we have opposite taste. So the fact that he liked my favorite record of all time is a magical moment. We call that legends only and how I, an idiot finangled my way into this menu to talk to you. I don't know. Okay. Hounds of love. Here it is. The breakthrough record for K. Bush and the U.S. worldwide, really. I mean, she's already a massive star in Europe, of course. But the fact that she, A, wouldn't tour and B, was a total weirdo who didn't fit any radio format, made it difficult for her to break through in the States. But here comes an album. upon which she marries her essential eccentricity, imagination, expansiveness with a sound that actually

works for the American audience and which generates probably her, would you say her best known songs? I think her biggest hits. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think running up that hill is probably her biggest and best known song if I had to guess. Although Wuthering Heights is probably up there as well. That's true. I feel like Wuthering Heights was recovered. Yeah. You know, it's like a recovered memory or something. It's a foundational text in art rock in what art rock becomes after punk happens and definitely a favorite now and always a favorite in. England, but it was definitely running up that hill with its apparent message of sort of self-help and and sucker that it offered. While at the same time, what is that song truly about? It's about a couple who are struggling, a man and a woman. And her solution is, God, please let us switch genders so we can understand each other better. She wanted to call the song Deal with God, but her radio crew, her label felt that that would be too controversial for markets where Catholicism and Christianity

had a hold and people would be offended that she was putting God in the title of a song, I guess. So she called it running up that hill. And I think that's interesting because the song hits as if it is just like kind of a, you keep going, you keep going, girl, you know, that's the message. And it's not really the message of the song, but there's more than one message. This is not a girl boss song. No, it's not a girl boss. For the record for everyone listening. But this is not that. But it is an advent, but it is the advent of that particular vocal that becomes Kate's kind of signature vocal, which you also hear on the duet with Peter Gabriel, don't give up. I like to think of it as the mother of the world vocal. You know, it's a, there's a,

There's a gentleness, there's a power, there is a yearning and a sorrow. It is like very, it is Madonna-esque in the religious sense, not in the Madonna sense, not in the pop stars. Not in the vogue, straight a pose, material girl sense. Although, yeah, see, I have to point out that what album did Hounds of Love knock off the charts in England? Was it like a virgin? It totally was. She toppled Madonna. And she suffered...

Do you think Madonna still holds some sort of resentment towards Capewich? Well, interesting question. Interesting question. I don't know. I mean, I would love to be in a room with those two talking. I think they would... I mean, I cannot imagine it, honestly. Like...

My brain just exploded in trying to picture. Especially modern, like present day Madonna, like with all of everything that goes with that in the room with Cape Bush. It's just not possible for computation. No, definitely not. Although, when you think about it, maybe in the Guy Ritchie phase when Madonna was trying to be a proper English lady. It could have happened, you know, all these different encounters. Why don't we play Running Up That Hill before we talk about it a little more?

Because I think we've really built it up. And, you know, there's probably still some people in corners of this earth that haven't heard this song. So this is Running Up That Hill, Parentheses, I Deal with God. That was Running Up That Hill. And what is your favorite line from this song? I don't know. The one that always, like, really just stabs me is tell me we both matter, don't we? Oh, yes.

Like, when that, like, even just now saying it out loud, like my arm hair is standing up, there's just something about, I don't know, it's like, it's such a simple phrase and it's, I don't know, there's just, the where it is in the song and the way she delivers it, like, it's really soft. I don't know. It always gets me. Like, it gets me in my gut. No, I love that. I think that that connects with something very important about Kate's lyrics, which is that while we've been talking a lot about kind of the mysticism of what she does or the eccentricity, but there's always a return to the ordinary, you know, like there, and even when she's imagining herself making a deal with God, then she's also talking in this very, she would even say, like suburban girl way. You know, and I think that's one reason why she's great. It's not just that she can be a fabulous.

It's that she can be totally relatable as she is moving through the clouds and moving through the universes. Totally. You know what it really reminds me of this is like such like a whatever non sequitur, but kind of not a non-sequitur. The tarot card, the 10 of Pentacles, because that one, it always sticks with me because I think like one of the like meanings of that card is. is like finding, like, magic and divine divinity in the ordinary, like, in earthly things. And I feel like that's, like, the card of Kate Bush, you know? Yes, totally. I mean, I think she would completely agree with you on that.

I will say that now that I'm thinking about the lyrics, probably my favorite line is when she is addressing her lover in the song and she says, let's exchange the experience. Oh, my God, yes. You know, it's cornyish, new age-ish, but also it's such a beautiful, it's a beautiful way to address your lover, right? You know, let you be me for a while and I'll be you to quote a completely unrelated band. Goodbye, the replacements. Yossi's dead. Yossi's dead.

Bye-bye. Goodbye. Shout out Paul Westerberg, the god. So this album came out in 1985. Yes. this broke her in America. Like she finally started to chart. Kate Bush was an ambitious person.

Like she did want to top the charts. So do you feel like it was the sort of like the slap in the face of the dreaming, not performing the way the other albums did that kind of made her double down and be like, I'll show you bitch? I think that's one way to look at it. A rather violent oppositional way to look at it. A more integrative way to look at it might be. She and Del Palmer, she was still involved with Del and they were working together, took three years and built a studio. And while she was working on the dreaming, she's experimenting so much with these sounds. And a lot of records from those kind of early 80s synthesizer records have that kind of like wacky lurching quality.

So they had the time to figure it out and like figure out. how to program drums, how to use synthesizers, how to integrate her voice into those mixes. And there were others who were working in similar territory. There was sort of the whole new Romantics movement was happening. There was also, I think, I mentioned it before, but can't underestimate the influence of Peter Gabriel. Peter Gabriel, I don't want to say he's 100% responsible for this, but he's very important in that he founds real world studios. He's bringing in all of these international voices. You know, he's connecting English artists like Kate, his friends with the world.

And this is like the seedbed of what, you know, out of which her music grows. It's a very eclectic, rhythmic bass in this music. And she's listening to African music. She's listening to Eastern European music. That becomes important in the future. I think all of those things are playing into the myth. And at the same time, there's this pop ballad aspect to it as well. You know, I have to say, when I heard this record, I did not like it initially.

For me, she was no longer my Kate. She was no longer by like woman in a bat costume. You know, she was for the masses. It was sort of similar moment to when in high school, I saw the biggest job. in my Catholic high school in Seattle, Dan O'Neill, walking down the hallway of my high school with a boombox playing freaking Bruce Springsteen. I'm like, no, Bruce Springsteen is mine. You cannot have Bruce Springsteen. And it was a similar moment where I was angry that she had sold out. It does really shadow for you like your own tastes when other people that maybe you don't feel a kinship with like it. Yes, totally. It's so interesting. Yeah. Do you feel like this music has an 80s sound? Well, there is the gated drum.

Yes. The gated drum defines the 80s. And as we move on and we get into the 2010s, Kate takes two of her albums, not this one, The Central World and the Red Shoes, and remakes many of the songs on those records on an album called Directors Cut, which she takes away the arrangements and does them in a more contemporary style. That certain kind of smooth that is also very cave-like, like you're in a cave of smooth. It's very clean. It's very clean and cavernous.

Yes, yes. Totally. Del and Kate were very interested in that, I think, because they were just up on the newest technology. And they wanted to be in on that. And it sounded completely. of the moment. But at the same time, like, what is happening within that sound? Musically and certainly lyrically, she is crafting on this album, a song cycle inspired by a line from a Tennyson poem about from Tennyson's cycle about King Arthur, about a shipwreck, about the idea of the

final wave in a shipwreck that takes down any surveillance. survivors. She's imagining herself as a woman drowning. And, you know, half this record is about the experience of drowning, which is that shit crazy and so cool. Why don't we hear one more song? I mean, if it were up to me, we'd hear like three more songs from Side A, but in the interest of this not being a 12-hour long podcast episode, why don't we hear one more song? I feel like we should listen to Hounds of Love and Honor of Lana Del Rey. Oh my God, totally. I was going to wait. for you to bring that up the album cover.

I was like, okay, go off homage. I know, I know. But it's homage to this and it's also, it turns out I was doing a little, you know, five-minute Google investigation on this, my deep scholarship, and discovered that Van Morrison's album, Vied and Fleece, has the same cover as well. So this song is a beautiful expression of love overtaking you in the form of hounds. No BSTU. Okay, let's hear Hounds of Love.

That was Hounds of Love. And you hear Yassi at the beginning of that song, another reference to a horror movie. The line in the male voice, it's in the trees, it's coming, is from the Jacques Tournier film Night of the Demon from 1957. The Professor character in that film declaring the demon is overtaking the group. It is the knight of the demon. Who's there? I see it in the trees. So cool.

It's happening in hip-hop. Totally. I think in hip-hop, you know, there's tons of references to, you know, to films like Scarface, for example. You could write a whole book on that, you know? I mean, that's definitely happening. But Kate stands not entirely alone, but she stands in a special place. And at the time in the 80s, she was criticized for it too. She was sort of derided for being this, you know, upper middle class suburban girl who read a lot of books and, you know, made a lot of literary illusions.

Come for me, everybody. Why don't you? Same. Exactly. Exactly. But I love it. What can I say? I'm a bookworm myself.

So give me those references. give them to me and mainline it into my veins. I can't let us move on without hearing the big sky. Oh, let's hear it. Okay. Here is the big sky. That was the big sky. Got to be digging those world music rhythms there, like I was saying.

I mean, now I think we can critique what's happening among white artists of the time where they're borrowing from African. musical traditions. Graceland came out, like maybe just one year after this also. It's all happening. I mean, African music was in an incredible moment of connecting with the West. But now, I think it's a little harder to do that and not be called out. Appropriating, yeah.

But in another way, back to what. what we were saying about Kate being the goddess of the hearth, the goddess of small details. This is really a song just about her being a little girl and looking at the little fluffy clouds overhead. So I think that's why we can relate to it so much. Who hasn't as a child had that experience? Yeah. It's such a great song. It is so simple.

You never understood me. Never really tried. I know. I know. Aren't she just like 10 years old again thinking that or 12 years old again listening to that line? You don't get me, mom, dad. Exactly. You know, one line I wanted to share from an interview with Kate from around this time,

Phil Sutcliffe who wrote liner notes for Hounds of Love included this in his liner notes. Kate says, in music, you have to break your back before you even start to speak emotion. And I think that gets at her vocality so beautifully. like she some call her melodramatic but for me she is just she is putting her body on the line to to speak emotion yeah wow that's like a who powerful powerful I want people to understand side B a little bit before we move on like you said earlier like it's sort of a story start to finish about drowning she does doesn't just write one song about that. She stays there and takes us through every phase.

Yeah, because it starts with And Dream of Sheet. Because you get sleepy when you're drowning. Yeah, exactly. When you're drowning. Exactly. And so that one's kind of like, you know, all about I can't keep my eyes open. I wish I had a radio very like specifically about being shipwrecked. And I think then it goes into Under Ice. Under Ice, you know, we're drowned. And then waking the witch is next. You must wake up.

Right, right. She's like trying to come back to life. And then she's imagining, you know, I guess invoking the attempt. And then watching you without me is like, I'm dead. Yeah. And here's what my loved ones will be like without me. You watch the globe. And there's a couple more songs and it goes on.

But anyways, you guys should really. She gets saved. That's the spoiler alert. Yeah, spoiler alert. But it's so poignant. Like, you know, her naming everyone in her life that would miss her, you know, her lover. She does this in her, her lovers, her family, you know, everyone in her life. And she does this often in her work. She always brings it back to that core personal.

experience. So again, driving this point home, it is the most, you know, wildest flight of the imagination grounded in the most humble sense of self. Totally. That's what's different about her and Lady Gaga. So that's a slight, that's how we make a slight differentiation between the two. But I, but I will say, I think that's something she shares with Lana Delbray. Like, I think Lana has her own way of doing that too. Like she's not as fantastical, but, you know, the thing that's relatable about Lana Del Rey is like those little details that make her seem like you or me, you know, like that kind of deconstruct the glamour.

Totally. We should quickly mention the video that Terry Gilliam directed that Donald Sutherland. And the great story of he was making a film near where they were shooting the video. and she went to his hotel room and knocked on the door. Imagine you're Donald Sutherland. That's some 80s shit where you could just like go to someone's hotel room and what, hello, could you give me Donald Sutherland's room number please? Sure, no problem. 205.

I know. I imagine like a very woody inn, you know, somewhere on the seaside and, you know, coastal England and Donald's sitting there having his tea. And here's Kate. Hatha, will you be in the video? And he was. It's a really cool video. You guys should watch it. I guess what I would say, the sensual world, the story is, you know, this is even more of an accessible sound, but she is also continuing to experiment both with international voices and with different collaborations. Okay. So, I mean, I think it's inarguable that Hounds of Love is sort of the pinnacle of the Kate Bush arc. But it's not the end.

She puts out another album I just want to reiterate This woman has not toured this entire time Just in case You know you guys forgot that We've now gone through massive career things Huge songs whatever And this woman has not played one show

She doesn't Yeah and like you said Not just not toured but not performing in London either Like no just not interested No she is a creature of the studio And like So cool like the queen of not doing what I don't want to do.

I love it. So the central world comes out four years later after Hounds of Love. I don't know much about this album. I think the thing to say about this album is that it is a continuation of Kate kind of perfecting the mainstream version of her sound. Right. So if House of Love is at the top of the arc, I would draw a plateau at the top and put this record with it as far as that. sound, the Cape Bush sound that the world thinks of as the Kate Bush sound. And on this record, she is still exploring, though, and experimenting. This is where she first works with Tria Bulgarka,

three women singers from Eastern Europe, that she discovered through a record called the Mysterio de Voie Bulgaris, which was a 1975 ethnomusicological collection that Evoitz, the head of 4 AD records, which you might know from such bands as like Cockto Twins, he found this record, reissued it, it became a huge thing. Suddenly we, you know, later you can think of Bjork. She also tapped into this sound of these Eastern European women vocalists with this absolutely wild way of singing. But it's significant in Kate Bush's career because it's the first and really the main time

she collaborates with women in the studio. And she felt, she said a strong female energy in the studio she had never felt before. And I think that connects with what this record is about, as the title says, kind of sensuality, femininity, all of that stuff. And that leads up to the most important sign on the record, which is this woman's work. Should we hear this woman's work and then also maybe hear a clip of the Maxwell version, which I think is almost equally as known. Yes, I think we should hear both. And I think that's perfect. This is this woman's work. That was this woman's work featured in the major motion picture. She's having a baby. I mean, did you what you?

The major motion picture is having a baby. Shout out Kevin Bacon. With Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern. Yeah. She really understood the assignment, as the kids say these days. She did, but like, you know, John Hughes, I guess when you think of simple mind, so you forget about me as probably the most famous song to be connected with a John Hughes film. You know, so he likes, you know, whatever John Hughes was motivated by English,

florid English vocals and new wave music. But I don't know. Kate Bush isn't the logical choice for me, but it's a very emotional scene in the movie. Childbirth gone wrong. It goes, again, it's a John Hughes movie. So in the end, everything is okay. Everything is okay.

What kind of movie we like around here? So Maxwell recorded his cover of this woman's work in 2001 for his album now. Right. I think he had an interesting. He initially performed it at an MTV unplugged or something. You know, he busted it out the way people would bust out. Like the way Nirvana busted out, where did you sleep last night, i.e. in the pines, you know, for their session. It was like that was a thing people did on those MTV shows.

Like something unexpected. But it was perfect. Yeah, and people loved it. Yes. On Maxwell's version of this woman's work, I want to just quote the writer Hilton Alls, who says about that version. He was singing from the soul of wonderment. How did women do their work? He was talking about his interests in their difference.

And I think that's such a powerful thing that happens in this song. Maxwell makes it an homage to women's power. And then it really becomes an R&B standard. And you see it like it's a favorite song on wedding playlists for black couples. I've seen it on wedding playlist on the internet. B.B. B.B. B. B. B. B. B. B. B. B. Campbell writes a book with the title, Even more recently, it's been used in montages, you know, protesting police violence. It's like the tone of mourning in the song that is connected to the tone of wonderment somehow resonates and becomes this whole other thing.

It's fascinating. To me, it's like that song is Kate Bush's, hallelujah. Oh, my God, totally. That is to say. It's one of those, you know, like every once in a while. this happens where like a cover of a song becomes much more famous than the original. And it's kind of, it takes the placeholder. And like this is one of those things.

Like the Maxwell version is kind of the version that everyone thinks of, I think. Yeah. No, completely. And the fact that, which is kind of cool. No, totally. I mean, the fact that,

that, you know, this signals her connection to R&B on a record where she side note also has a track collaborating with prints where they exchange demos and there's this kind of crazy song called Why Should I Love You? You all can check that on your own. But yeah, Kate becomes a kind of beloved figure among R&B and hip-hop artists as well at this point.

Also much like Counting Crows cover of Big Yellow Taxi, really supplanted the Joni Mitchell one. Just kidding. Just kidding. Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton, don't you drop on my Vanessa. I'm so sorry. Anne Nashville's own great queen, Vanessa Carlton. Okay. So in between the next album, Kate just quickly covers a couple of Elton John songs, Rocket Man and Candle in the Wind.

Her friend, Elton, her inspiration and friend. Elton John remains being a friend to all of the pop stars of England. He is. And leading up to Duolupa. And then in 1993, she releases her seventh album. album, The Red Shoes. Yes. For me, this was a return to the Kate that I loved, but the world didn't necessarily agree.

Well, this is also the cool, the very cool thing of, like, her making the short film. Yes. Yes. It's not a visual album per se, because that's not really what it is, but like kind of the precursor to the visual album, right? Yes. The cross, the line and the curve. Am I getting that right, I think? The line, the cross on the curve.

I don't know better than you. I'm just literally looking at the Wikipedia right now in front of me. I would not have been able to say it. Yes. This is Kate. She was, guess what? She was doing. She was planning a tour.

And she decided, instead of touring, she would make a film. So there you go. Another reason not to tour. We love that. I'm iconic. She's like, you know, I was going, you know, guys. But then it felt like this seemed more important. And ultimately, it kind of was.

Exactly. What is what did you like about the red shoes or the return like sonically? I just think there was a movement away from that kind of ambient atmospheric sound and more into just a more jagged kind of sound. Especially I think typified by the title track. It's a Hans Christian Anderson's story, The Red Shoes, about a young girl who wants to dance, wants to become a ballet dancer. And she, it's a fairy tale. So she finds this, she is, you know, finds this pair of shoes. If you put them on, little girl, you will be the greatest dancer, but she puts them on and she can't stop dancing.

And it becomes her end, her curse. Michael Powell made an amazing film. You have to watch it. It's like this incredible color-saturated melodrama based on the story. And that inspired this song. And there's a great video of Kate dancing like a crazy person in this video. So I think it was, and another song from the record rubber band girl kind of represents that sound too, that kind of just like really undecentered, you know, crazy sound.

I just loved having that back. But you also have a bit of the ambient flavor or the more gentle flavor on a song like moments of pleasure, which is a very beautiful elegy for lost friends, members of her extended family who had died. So it's a, to me, it's, I love that. Some people think this record was similar to like David Bowie's eventual experiments with Trent Reznor and some around, I guess, a little later. It was an attempt to, you know, enter the 90s that made her seem all the more dated. But I love it. Not the attempt to enter the 90s.

Just like my attempt to never leave the 90s, they're on two sides of the same. I'm haunted by the red shoes because it's the red shoes because they're bloody because the woman can't stop dancing. Yeah. I made a great metaphor for a total perfectionist artist who sometimes might have felt a little bit trapped by her own career. Right. Oh my God, totally. And then, like not to diminish the tail end of Kate Bush's career, but she puts out Ariel. Yes. 12 years later.

12 years later. 12 years. Now something... Well, she had a baby. Yes, something good happens. She and Del break up. They're on the rocks around the time of the red shoes. But then they break up. She gets together with Danny McIntosh, who is a guitarist who appears on the red shoes.

And they have a child, Bertie, Albert. And then Kate becomes... She becomes a mom. She takes on momhood 100%. She did not have a house cleaner or a nanny for five years. Wow. Yeah. And, you know, she did it all. She went fully in to stay-at-home mom. Similar to Patty Smith, I guess, when she had her kids. She doesn't do much of anything musically for five years. Bertie goes to school. She and Danny start experimenting in that old home. studio and start recording and eventually out of that comes Ariel, her domestic album. I don't love that label necessarily, but I mean, it's just true as far as this record goes. There is

even a song about doing laundry. But of course. Let me ask you, why don't you like that label? Well, I think it feels like immediately gendered in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Like, why does bedroom oture apply to you know male geniuses who make things

in their house you know but domestic album somehow invokes scented candles to me pumpkin sensitive do you think

I'm being too sensitive? No no not necessarily I mean I more think that there's like nothing wrong

with the domestic life and I think that almost has become like because it's associated with women has become considered a lesser thing and I think that's not that's I guess what like makes me a little more I'm like just because it's more traditionally female which it just is and there's no getting around that like that's just true doesn't mean it's lesser it's like actually an incredibly rich and like fruitful and fertile

world to draw things from and I and I agree with your thing like I don't think people maybe give it that credit, but, like, as what it is, like, I think it's, like, a really cool place to write from. Oh, yeah. So you are hitting on one of the fundamental debates within feminism, you know? I mean, this is something that goes back to the days of the early days of the second wave when artists like Judy Chicago were making works like the dinner party, you know, work in which she imagines a table set with dinner settings that evoke. women's bodies in very explicit ways. But, you know, there were definitely second-way feminists who would totally agree that that honoring crafts, honoring domestic work is so important. And then there is another argument that would be like, we want to get out there in the world

and we don't want to be associated with this woman's work, as it were. But, you know, it's sort of the difference between Kate and someone like PJ Harvey, I don't know, Patty Smith. even though Patty did have her domestic face. I really appreciate Ariel. I love the love that's on this record. I love the she has a beautiful song to her son on this record. I also love the kind of like attention to detail. Being Kate, there is a song cycle on this record.

There's two sides. It's a double album. First of all, it's her first double album. And there's a side called The Sea of Honey. And then there's the sky of honey. And the Sky of Honey came about because she was listening to birds sing in her garden. And she, in fact, duets with birds on the track Ariel Tau, which is quite beautiful. But the song I chose for us to listen to from this record is called a choral room.

And it's dedicated to her mother who had died right before the Red Shoes was completed. And a huge loss for this incredibly tight-knit family. And the reason I chose a choral room is because I think it's a very sonically gentle song, but it combines this imagery, almost sci-fi dystopian imagery of a decaying city with then a memory of her mother and this little brown jug that her mother had, literally, that that reminds Kate of how her mother would sing to her. And it's just such a perfect expression of the epic and the and the homie together in a Cape Bush song. The magic and the mundane. Yes, exactly. All right. Let's hear a choral room.

That was a coral room. That's a really beautiful song. I know. And it's just like one of those songs that I wanted to highlight because I don't want these kinds of songs to be missed. You know, they're not as spectacular, some of her songs. But, you know, Del Palmer once said. asked not too long ago, like what does he most love about Kate's work? And he says, I just love the songs where she's at the piano, you know, the ones where there aren't so many bells and whistles,

but you really get at the essence of her introspection. I think the choral room is a beautiful example of that. Yeah. That's amazing. She was like 47 years old there, so I feel like it. Yes. I think you can hear the maturity in her voice. I love to hear singers' voices change. I was going to ask you if you thought, because to me it did sound like her voice had definitely changed. Yes. I mean, it's similar to Joni. You know, she doesn't have the elasticity. It's not as extreme as Joni because Joni is very committed to smoking.

Blasting sigs from morning to morning, noon, and night. Yes. But, you know, there's a, I mean, all the things you can say. There's a richness. There's a burnished quality, whatever. but she's not doing the crazy leaps. And she settles into this sound that is ambient. Ambient's not the right word.

I don't know what the word is. Just spare, maybe a little more spare. Yeah, yes. And it becomes, she continues in that direction. And her next studio album of original music, 50 Words for Snow, is extremely like that. Although the songs are still the topic, the subject matter of the songs and the structure. They're very long. Still shows that she's, you know, her imagination is still going wild.

But the sound now is more contained, I guess. Right. Okay. So you mentioned 50 Words for Snow, which comes out in 2011. Yes. This is pretty much the last album. Yeah, so far. I mean, you never know.

We never know what will happen. Something important happens about five years later, but which, which is a lot of, which is an amazing moment in her life. We'll talk about that. But yes, she makes this record very quickly after she's made director's cut. It has a winter theme. She really sticks to the theme. Every song has that snow frame around it.

She duets with Elton John on a song called Snowden on Wheeler Street. When we got to the top of the head, we saw Roan burning. Oh, wow. There is a song about having sex with a snowman. Sure. Of course there is. Of course there is. Chasing the Yeti, as I mentioned, the actor, Stephen Frye, delivers a vocal on the song,

50 words for snow in homage, as you said, to indigenous people's custom of having many words for snow. But they just make up their own crazy words for snow. She and Stephen. Stephen, Fred. Sure. And then I wanted to highlight this song called Snowflake because I think it is a beautiful passing of the frozen torch. I'm just having a Narnia moment here, Yassie. The white witch, although she's a good witch, passes the frozen torch to her son, Bertie, who takes over the vocal on this song, which in beautiful Cape Bush fashion imagines what it would be like to be a snowflake falling and disintegrating.

And we hear Birdie's childlike voice in this song, which I absolutely love. Okay, amazing. What's here? This is Snowflake. That was Snowflake. Okay, so. Where is Kate now? Well, I mean, I think, you know, we're getting close to wrapping up the episode.

But you mentioned something important to happen. I don't know if you're talking about that she finally fucking played shows again. Oh, yes. What else could I do? talking about. That's the only thing I could be talking about. I'm not talking about the time she got an autograph from the queen for Bertie, although that's a hilarious scene to imagine. But, no, this is one of the great regrets of my life because I did not go to London to attend one of these shows. And I hate myself deeply for that. We all have one of these. Mine is not going to the

Matador 21. Producer Dillins is not being allowed to go see Death Cab for Cutie at the showbox. Right. See, there we go. We all have it. This is mine. And she played 22 nights at, it was Hammersmith Odean, I believe. Yes. It was a very elaborate theatrical production, of course, and she slayed from everybody's accounts. And she did release, thank you, Kate, a DVD of this before the dawn, so we can watch the show and wish we were there. But we can experience it. Yeah.

And this was sort of like a Renaissance moment. I don't know. This was a get your flowers moment, I'll just say. You know, this is her getting her flowers. And you see, this is also the moment when you start to see a lot of reassessments of her work in such, in such music publications as pitchfork. I think they've reviewed all of the records. But, you know, you see a lot of sort of writing and younger artists saying, oh, my God, I love Kate Bush. She's so great.

So, yeah, it's amazing that she finally had this moments of performance. I don't, I don't think she'll ever perform again. probably, but I'm glad she did. I wish I'd been there. Me too. I heard a rumor that she appears on the forthcoming Big Boy album, but I think we won't know that for a while. Oh, well, if that really, I mean, he's like mega Kate Bush fan. Oh, his relentless campaign. I hope it paid off. Like, I mean, no one has been more dedicated. It's like, I mean, it's Docker levels, but in a good way. Well, speaking of Cape Bush mega fans, there's a segue for you, we gathered some other

mega fan voices. We did not speak to Big Boy, but we spoke to some other people. And why don't we listen to what they had to say? You know, nobody's mind works quite the way Kate Bush's mind works. She does things on records that just are not. done by anyone else. Somewhere in this world, there's this amazing woman who can like inspire, but also make me specifically as a woman feel anger, beauty, promise, hope, all these like very contradicting emotions all at once. Kate Bush isn't just a musician. She's a force of nature.

She's a trailblazer who radically transformed the world around her through her art. There are so many musicians who don't even realize that she made their work possible. With that, I'll say, Hounds of Love is by far, it's her album of hers. Start to finish from the drumbeat to the beginning of running up the hill, to the closing of morning fog. It feels like it could all have been contained in one like rainy Sunday morning or an expanse of virtual reality, like you're in a game of Zelda. She's a hecking genius.

I don't know if I'm allowed to cuss on this. thing. So I will say hecking. She's a hacking genius. How would most pop stars tour without the headset microphone that was created for her 1979 tour of life using her wire hanger? I always say that some people burn sage or save the Lord's prayer to cleanse their energy. And I just listen to her running up that help. I know I'm listening to a Kate Bush song before I even hear her sing. It's just, you know, it's very obvious to me in the production. If there is a I think Kate Bush was made as closely to her likeness as humanly possible. Okay, just some lukewarm feelings about Kate Bush, nothing over the top.

Shout out to one of my besties, Heather Fortune, also an incredible musician. We heard from in those fan voices makes great music. Yeah, I mean, they're not wrong. I didn't hear a lie amongst any of those things. If there is a god, we might create her in Kate Bush's likeness. We might make a deal with that. We might make a deal with Kate. Kane, I'd like to make a deal with you.

Play one more time in America. Please. I don't know. Sometimes isn't it better just to like preserve the memory than to, I don't know. No, I hear you. Honestly, I've had the opportunity to interview her. once or twice and I've never done it. I don't know.

Maybe this, doing this with you, Yassi makes me want to talk to her, though, because I feel like, I don't know, I'd come armed with all the, all the knowledge having this wonderful experience of refreshing my own relationship to her. So, Kate, give me a call. Kate, babe, if you're listening, I know you are subscribed to Bansplains. You did mention you loved the Red Hot Chili Peppers four hour long. episode. Okay. Well, sadly, for Kate and all the rest of our listeners, we've reached the end of our journey through the Uvr of Kate Bush. And thank you so, so much. I could not have imagined a more

perfect and exquisite guest to walk me through. Well, thank you so much for allowing me to go so deep into the rabbit hole that I've gone through every doorway in Wonderland, drunk every potion and come back out, all in honor of my favorite artist, Kate Bush. We absolutely appreciate it. And we're happy that this episode is so long because it is a stain on both producer Dylan and I is conscious that our red hot chili peppers episode is longer than, you know, Joni Mitchell, some other things. But that was just the way the podcast cookie crumbled. Shout out red hot jelly peppers. Okay.

Ann, do you want to choose one last song to leave our listeners with? We haven't listened to Cloudbusting, and I thought it would be nice to go out on something from the performances, because that was Kate's moment to get her flowers. And she's still in great voice. And why not this anthem of audacity, you know, this anthem about squirting. This, you know, this song about like trying to influence weather itself. I mean, that has a whole other meaning in the era of climate change. I mean, it's just, it captures everything about her that I love, the fact that it's a story of a father and the sun, but it's also about shattering the clouds. It's, it's perfect.

So let's hear that. Okay, amazing. Come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain. Thank you, Anne. And here is cloudbusting live from before the dawn. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bansplaine, only on Spotify. Our incredible guest today was Ann Powers. Follow her on Twitter at Ann K. Powers.

Huge, huge thanks to the Kate Bush mega fans you heard on this episode, Amanda Schultz, Heather Fortune, Samuel Morena, and Zoe Peresman. Bansplane is a Spotify original show. This episode was produced by the Heathcliff to My Kathy, producer Dylan, a.k.a. Dylan Tupper Rupert, and edited by Michael Hardman, with help from Casey Simonson and Tari Miller. Executive producers for Bansplain are Gina Delvac and me, Yossi Salaf. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethanyi Cozantino and Jennifer Clavin and graciously recorded by Carlos Delaguerza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to Felipe Ghi Hermino, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson,

Jessica Hopper, and the frame drawing of Dave Matthews I got on Deepa. the spirit continues to guide this entire show. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of bands playing only on Spotify. Let me in your window.