‘The Sensual World’: Kate Bush, Caroline Polachek and the purity of lyrical composition
Pop music is in its prime. PC Music and innovative producers like Sophie gave the genre a breath of fresh air in the 2010s, pushing the genre to its limits with metallic soundscapes and exaggerated aesthetics. Since then, Charli XCX has become a trailblazer in the realm, delivering one of the most exciting album roll-outs in decades with Brat, while artists like Confidence Man have made pop dance-worthy again. At the centre of it all is Caroline Polachek.
Combining winding Enya-style vocals with genre-blending soundscapes, Polachek straddles the world of experimental, avant-garde pop and more radio-friendly stylings. She burst onto the scene with Pang back in 2019, taking the internet by storm with pop hits like ‘So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings’. Since then, she has ventured into more experimental territory, pulling in unexpected instrumentation like Spanish guitars and bagpipes on her latest offering, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You.
Though her instrumentation flits between sonic influences with ease, Polachek’s distinctive voice has always remained a constant in her sound. Her vocals swing high and low without warning. They’re operatic and airy, unbothered by the strange instrumentation that surrounds them. Her idiosyncratic voice has become a completely essential element of her art-pop sound, not dissimilar to Kate Bush.
Before Polachek assumed her place as the leading light of art-pop, Bush paved the way for the current generation to thrive. She demonstrated her vocal and artistic prowess from the moment she released her debut single, the literary-inspired ‘Wuthering Heights’, which made her the first woman to reach number one with a self-written song. The artsy instrumentation and impossibly high vocals kicked off the distinctive style that Bush would become known for.
In the years that followed, Bush cemented her place as a pop pioneer. She entranced audiences with the ethereal ‘Running Up That Hill’ and the dreamy ‘Cloudbusting’, creating a sound that still influences pop stars today. Perhaps expectedly, art-pop aficionado Polachek is one of Bush’s many pop disciples.
While sharing a list of her favourite songs for Marantz, Polachek shared her love for the title, opening track from Bush’s 1989 album The Sensual World. She described the song as a “wind-swept internal vignette of Kate’s relationship with giving in and saying ‘Yes,’ being swept away by romance, with a person — but it also feels like it’s really about life.”
Opening with the sound of wedding bells, ‘The Sensual World’ features swirling synths, bagpipes, and poetic wishes to live in the sensual world. “Stepping out of the page into the sensual world,” Bush sings. It’s a wistful and wonderful track that shows off Bush’s complete command over the art-pop genre. “It’s such a pure song, lyrically,” Polachek added.
It’s easy to see why Polachek, in particular, admires this track. The romanticised imagery of mountain flowers and sunsets, the heavenly vocals that ground the strange instrumentation, even the off-kilter inclusion of bagpipes are all features that have been incorporated into Polachek’s own sound.
Bush and ‘The Sensual World’, in particular, are clearly formative influences on Polachek’s own songwriting style. She may be a leading figure in the modern art-pop scene, a leading light in the contemporary reinvention of pop, but it was Bush who paved the way for her to do so. ‘The Sensual World’ is just one example of her extraordinary influence on pop music.
