More about: Kate Bush

How much of a good thing can kill you? When do the things we love start to smother us? Or at least make us really, really sick of them? It’s a question that the culture of TV show binging has tested us with over and over. So with nothing good left to watch on Netflix and the winter lockdown delusion setting in, for some reason, I decided to test it out with my one true love: Kate Bush.

With little to no interaction with other humans and even less sunlight, what better artist to over-indulge in than Kate Bush, with her discography full of odd story lines, high notes and whispering vocal effect? But could the beautiful madness of Kate ever become too much? For some reason I decided to try it, listening to every song she’s ever made in a single day...

9am - The Kick Inside

Starting your day off with The Kick Inside is never a chore. The album feels luxurious;  stupidly luxurious, like the inside of an eccentric rich old woman’s apartment full of weird trinkets and diamonds. Settling into my day with her best sensual crooning tracks like 'Moving' and 'Saxophone Song', I have no regrets, no second-thoughts.

But then it happens: the intro to 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes' creeps into my ears. "I hear him, before I go to sleep / And focus on the day that’s been" - awful. Yeah she wrote it when she was 12 or whatever, but she should’ve left that one in the notepad. God knows what she’s singing about...but it sounds illegal. 

Taking the time to recover, I sip my coffee and use the time to gather strength ready for a rousing 'Wuthering Heights' singalong, making a mental note to really commit to learning the choreography. 

10am – Lionheart

Starting off with 'Symphony in Blue', Kate singing "the more I think about sex the better it gets" makes me feel a certain type of way, but it's just as quickly quelled with 'In Search Of Peter Pan'.

I’m starting to realise that I’m in for a long-slog, scrolling through my playlist and listening to Kate sing about how much she loves England; a stance that’s extra annoying while I’m locked in my Manchester flat for god knows how long. 

My spirits are raised briefly as I join Kate in belting out the WOWOWOWOW bit in the obviously amazing 'Wow', but the second that’s over I zone out through some of her most forgettable tracks as 'Coffee Homeground' feels more like a coffee headache. 

11:30am - Never For Ever

'Babooshka' deserves to be played more. I want to be in a club absolutely losing it to the glass-smash sound effects and attempting to recreate the music video with my friend as the double bass. Ah, bliss.

My hazy post-covid daydreams put me in such a good mood that I find the weird man saying "Ta Ta Ta" on 'Delius' funny rather than annoying and her theatrical revenge banger 'The Wedding List' sounds bigger than ever. 

I’m about to feel more excited about diving into Kate’s stranger side, until it hits me full force. Finishing off the album with intense ballads about war, atomic bombs and the dilemma of your dead lover’s ghost possessing the body of the kid you babysit, it’s a lot.

Spiralling into a mood I can only describe as manic, I take a walk. My ears eat up the silence: heaven.

1pm – The Dreaming

By the time I start again, I’ve bought wine, some hairdressing scissors to cut my own hair and drank a Baileys coffee, so I think that says all we need to know about where I’m at mentally.

The Dreaming is heavy from the get go: it’s primetime screechy Kate which is great when she’s screaming "I love life!" on 'Pull Out The Pin', but far less fun when she’s yelling "harm is in us" at you in a weird distorted voice on 'Leave It Open'. Trying to follow the highs and lows, I feel delirium setting in, suddenly aware of how quickly the sky is darkening. 

While my friends talk about the TV they’re watching and the day’s new album releases, I have FOMO for a Kate Bush-free life as she’s getting way too comfortable with unnecessarily long songs and whispering in my ear. Just like ASMR, which I hate.

2pm – Hounds of Love

I’ve never been unhappy to hear 'Running Up That Hill', a song that could be blasted into my brain on repeat and I still wouldn't get tired of. When the bridge kicks in, I’m singing along with the conviction of a person desperate to save their relationship. Maybe in a way I am clinging to Hounds of Love like a life raft in an experiment that threatens to ruin my favourite artist forever. 

Hounds of Love is a desert island album, housing so many of her best songs. 'Mother Stands For Comfort' still sounds so new and modern, 'Jig of Life' hits harder than usual, and 'Waking The Witch' is… there. By the final notes of 'The Morning Fog' I almost want to applaud, no amount of over-exposure would ever be enough to ruin that masterpiece. Take a bow Kate.

3:30pm – Sensual World

Maybe it’s the effect of following Hounds of Love, or maybe it the mid-afternoon slump, but The Sensual World feels like going up and up on a rollercoaster when you can’t see the drop. In this metaphor, the drop is obviously 'This Woman’s Work', a track that makes me feel like a wine mum so I’m cracking open a bottle and prepping for my singalong. Allow it.

5pm - The Red Shoes

Of all Kate’s albums, The Red Shoes is the one I want to blast off my balcony across the city. Like one of those preachers stood with a boom-box in the centre of town, I want to force everyone to hear Kate scream, "don’t want your bullshit, just want your sexuality", as she does God a favour by re-writing the Bible into a much catchier format.

6:30pm – Aerial

After a 12-year break, I don’t know why she bothered to come back if she was just going to sing about washing machines, maths and her son. 

I teeter slightly on the edge of giving up, very aware that all the best has gone and I’m now left with the dredges: 4 more hours of dredges. Have I ruined Kate Bush forever? I begin feeling like in 5-years’ time I’ll turn on one of her albums only to get flashbacks to this moment, where she bored me to the point where I started voluntarily cleaning my oven. 

Usually I love An Endless Sky Of Honey, returning to her old theatrical self with a 45-minute concept piece, but it just doesn’t do it for me tonight. Could be the 10 minutes of Kate Bush making bird noises, but it’s probably the way her son’s voice screams nepotism in every bum note.  

8pm – Director’s Cut

To tackle Director’s Cut I pour a massive glass of wine and take to the bath. Now well into her 50s, Kate decided to re-record songs from when she was 19, making up for the fact she can no longer hit her high notes by re-recording the songs, and making them really, really long.

It sounds like a drunk Kate Bush doing Kate Bush karaoke, so I drink quickly and surrender into it. Slipping into the delirium that’s been threatening me all day, I feel like her target audience as we do a drunk rendition of 'Lily' together, feeling like she’s got her arm draped round me in a bar. It’s quite moving really.

10pm – 50 Words For Snow

I deserve better than to be spending my Friday night listening to Kate Bush sing about shagging a snowman. That’s all I have to say about this album: I’m going to go back to pretending it doesn’t exist now.

11pm – The Other Sides

With the finishing line in sight, the snowman trauma fades away as the 12” version of 'Running Up That Hill' unfolds, somehow even better than the original.

Vibing along to the criminally underrated 'You Want Alchemy', I try to draw some conclusion about my day other than "my head hurts" and "well she sure is prolific". Adrenaline is pumping through my veins, feeling like I’ve just mainlined 11 seasons of trash TV, complete with screaming fights and baffling storylines. 

Conclusion

As the final album finishes and silence fills my room, I want to say that it was really rewarding to get a clear image of all Kate’s fascinations and inspirations. I could talk about how it’s a crime that we don’t have some weird Kate Bush version of Mamma Mia, like a psychological drama set along to her songs, but honestly, I want to not think about Kate Bush at all, at least for a couple of days...then I’ll press play on 'Babooshka' and relapse into my love all over again.

More about: Kate Bush