The first moment Kate Bush could “really appreciate” her own work
Every artist tends to run into some imposter syndrome at least once in their lives. As much as you might believe that your music has the power to change the world, there are only so many times you can hammer away at it before you start thinking that everyone who says you’re going nowhere is actually right. Kate Bush could have cared less about what most people thought about her work, but it wasn’t until Never for Ever that she felt comfortable with what she was making.
Then again, Bush was probably better at making music than most of us will ever be in our entire lives while she was still in her teens. Before she had even become the pop goddess we know today, Bush was already becoming one of the biggest names in progressive pop thanks to the way she used chord progressions, almost giving a baroque feel to standard pop tunes.
After getting the attention of David Gilmour, Bush started to test the limits of what constituted a pop hit on her first album, The Kick Inside. While ‘Wuthering Heights’ had already become a pop staple from the album, she wasn’t about to spend the rest of her career resting on her laurels and making the kind of prog music only connoisseurs could appreciate.
While Lionheart was considered a bit of a hurdle by some media outlets, Never For Ever marks a moment where Bush started to see what she could really do. All of the songs might be pop-song length, but how are you supposed to categorise a song like ‘Babooshka’ as a pop song, especially with her first attempts at music videos turning into abstract theatre pieces?
Regardless of its lack of pop appeal, Bush said the album was one of her few works that she would happily revisit, saying, “For me, this was the first LP I’d made that I could sit back and listen to and really appreciate. I’m especially close to Never For Ever. It was the first step I’d taken in really controlling the sounds and being pleased with what was coming back”.
For all of the record’s uncommercial aspects, Never For Ever is a real turning point in Bush’s career. If this album flirted with the idea of being weird on record, then The Dreaming was where she threw caution to the wind and got freaky on every single track. There were still melodies on every song, but you can hear her trying out different spaces with her voice and making bold leaps in production throughout the record.
Whereas most people see Never For Ever as an also-ran in Bush’s catalogue, Hounds of Love probably wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t broken down the door. If she didn’t realise that her experimentation worked to some degree, where would she have gotten the idea of eventually splitting an album up into two different sides, one of which is a sprawling operatic piece about a woman stranded at sea?
If anything, Bush’s career would get even stranger as the years went on, either turning in more ambitious pieces like ‘This Woman’s Work’ or bringing in classical composers like Michael Kamen to create the amazing arrangements on The Red Shoes. The Kick Inside may have been the birth of Kate Bush as a solo artist, but Never For Ever was the birth of her as a studio lab rat ready to take her music in every direction she wanted.
