Kate Bush’s favourite avant-garde albums
When Kate Bush reinvented her sound with the revolutionary 1982 album The Dreaming, much of the record-buying public didn’t know what to make of it. In fact, it was so ahead of its time that, even now—over 40 years later—it can still feel impenetrable, mystifying, and expectation-confounding on the first few listens.
Four years earlier, Bush had exploded into the public consciousness with her monumental and beguiling debut, The Kick Inside. Built around classic song formats with clear roots in the contemporary rock scene, the album still made it clear that Bush was no ordinary singer-songwriter. With its added theatrics, art-rock sensibilities, and baroque ornamentation—coupled with Bush’s supernaturally poetic lyrics and mystical voice—the album was a sensation.
Her rushed second release, Lionheart (which is better than anyone gives it credit for, including Bush herself), and the Tour of Life followed within a year. Then, in 1980, Bush expanded on her now-expected sound with Never for Ever. Featuring her biggest hit, ‘Babooshka’, audiences around the world could be forgiven for thinking they had finally cracked the Kate Bush formula—ethereal, artsy, theatrical, and baroque radio-friendly rock with big ideas and big hooks. If they thought they could pigeonhole her, though, they were way off.
Her first self-produced work, The Dreaming, saw Bush taking full control of her sound and style. With the success and creative freedom her growing popularity afforded her, she set about expanding her approach—ultimately exploding her form and redefining her songwriting entirely.
She had initially employed her newly acquired Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesizer on Never For Ever, but now she mastered the machine and utilised it extensively across her new album. While her older works were instantly recognisable as Kate Bush songs, there were anchors in the wider cultural and musical scenes that connected them to what else was happening in the studios, charts and clubs of the time. Not so with The Dreaming. No other albums had songs that sounded like ‘Sat In Your Lap’, ‘Pull Out the Pin’, ‘Suspended in Gaffa’, ‘Leave It Open’, ‘Night of the Swallow’ or ‘Get Out of My House’.
The reception to the album was mixed. One review claimed that the album was “very weird” and added that “dhe’s obviously trying to become less commercial”, while another found more to praise amongst the bemusement, saying: “Initially it is bewildering and not a little preposterous, but try to hang on through the twisted overkill and the histrionic fits and there’s much reward”.
Bush would go on to extend the experiment and truly master her newfound sound with her next album—one of her many magnum opuses—Hounds of Love. Her new direction was soon vindicated by the influence and respect she garnered from peers, fans, and critics alike. And if she was the only one making music like this in 1982, it wasn’t long before her sound began seeping into the art of other luminous musicians. She has been a major influence on astounding artists in their own right, such as Björk, Fiona Apple, St Vincent, and FKA Twigs—among many others across genres and generations.
In fact, Bush may be the last of the truly great, revolutionary British avant-garde artists. M.I.A and FKA Twigs may be the closest that we’ve seen in terms of her mainstream ingenuity, but even still, no one from these isles has matched Bush for wildly reimagining what it’s possible to do with popular music since her debut.
With her credentials, status, and legacy secure, then, it is interesting to know what other avant-garde albums Kate Bush enjoys herself. But what is even more interesting is what avant-garde albums she enjoyed right before her own jump into the unknown and the unknowable in the early 1980s.
So, her favourite albums?
Around the time she released Never for Ever, Bush also revealed a list of her all-time favourite albums.
With an artist as astonishing as Kate Bush, there should be no surprises here. Featuring the likes of Stevie Wonder (The Secret Life of Plants), David Bowie (Young Americans), and even the Eagles (One of These Nights), the list also included two world music curios—Eberhard Weber’s Fluid Rustle and Treasures of the Baroque Era by The TV National Iranian Chamber Orchestra.
In the middle of all that were two far more experimental albums from fellow avant-gardeners and two records Bush called favourites.
- Captain Beefheart – Blue Jeans and Moonbeams
- Frank Zappa – Over-Nite Sensation
