The album Kate Bush was a “complete wreck” making
Kate Bush has never been known for playing by the rulebook, nor for making things easy for herself. But by the nature of this very mantra, it has also often pushed her to her absolute limit.
After three albums, which, although admittedly weren’t entirely conventional, did capture enough of a mainstream pop imagination to catapult the singer into being a mega star, record number four needed an injection of something so startling to remind people that this woman was anything but predictable. Thus, The Dreaming was born.
It probably seemed like a great idea at first for Bush to be the one-woman show who sang, danced, and ran the entire project. Indeed, by the virtue of her being able to self-produce the 1982 record, it granted her a greater degree of freedom than she had ever been given before, therefore facilitating her to push her wildest artistic dreams beyond the boundaries once thought possible.
But the major drawback was the sheer onus it placed on her as an individual to deliver. There was no sounding board, no devil’s advocate, and ultimately no one else to blame if things went wrong other than herself. Even for some of the most seasoned professionals and coolest heads, that’s one hell of a lot of pressure to put on yourself.
Of course, despite all the challenges that this set-up presented, there was something invigorating for Bush in pushing against the grain. “For the first time I was meeting resistance artistically,” she later told BBC Radio 1. “People were saying, ‘She’s really gone mad now – listen to this really weird record!’”
Yet within this also came the tacit admission that the strain might have simply been too much. “I was just a complete wreck, physically and mentally,” she confessed. “I’d wake up in the morning and find I couldn’t move.” There was no denying that this was Bush’s magnum opus which no one could take away from her, but when it came to the point where she could no longer be out in the world because of it, something had to give.
The most obvious repercussion was in the fact that The Dreaming became the singer’s least successful record to date, although it still fared pretty well by any standards. Reaching number three in the charts and being certified silver, this would have been cause for celebration for many, but by Bush’s track record, it fell to the runt of the pack.
This is not a suggestion that The Dreaming is the album Bush has most lived to regret, but it has clearly remained a warning in her mind not to push things as far as she once thought they could go, not least to keep her health and sanity intact. The only option was a complete pivot – and not three years later, when she delivered Hounds of Love, we all know how the story went from there.
The following iconic album in 1985 is not to be deemed a retreat back into the comfort blanket of commerciality, but it was a testament to the lessons learned from The Dreaming and the help Bush needed as an artist from other people to truly reach her prime. Running your own show is by no means a bad thing, but the ultimate reality is, the buck stops with you.
