‘Wow’: the ridiculed song that saved Kate Bush’s career
One of the cardinal rules Kate Bush prioritised was to never repeat the same thing twice. It would be interesting to see where music could go without any rules, and spending her career trying to make the next pop hit was never going to work when making records like Hounds of Love would be more interesting. Right as she was getting off the ground, though, one of her most unintentionally hysterical songs ended up giving her a second wind in the music industry.
Before even getting into her material, you have to remember that Bush was still a kid when making her first record, The Kick Inside. Most of us would consider ourselves lucky to still be in our teens and make something as adventurous as ‘Wuthering Heights’, but by the time the sessions for Lionheart started, it was clear that she was still trying to figure out what she wanted to be.
As with all sophomore releases, the label normally wants the product as fast as possible, which means digging in the vaults to pull out songs that might not have been able to be fleshed out for the first record. Although Bush could still whip any idea into something magical, ‘Wow’ is one of the stranger offerings that she made around that time.
Despite the chorus itself being singled out for repeating the same word over and over again, Bush is seething about the pressures that come with being in the music business. Since her mentor, David Gilmour, already knew the ins and outs of what the industry had to offer, seeing her ridicule the corporate suits for only wanting a piece of her and not caring about the music is the closest thing to a punk rock statement she was ever going to make.
In the background, though, Bush was already looking to move things around. If the industry didn’t have her best interests in mind, she was going to build her own company around her, eventually working out deals where everything was kept in-house, whether that was her putting together her one and only major tour or having complete freedom whenever she made another record.
And musically, ‘Wow’ is also a sneak preview of what Bush would be doing on some of her later records. Nothing that she ever made could be considered safe and radio-friendly from front to end, but given its weird structure and often-parodied chorus, there are bits and pieces of the studio wackiness that would appear on albums like The Dreaming later, especially when she starts singing outside of her usual range.
But that’s the beauty of Bush’s music, to begin with. Most people can stare on in stark amazement at someone willing to have the guts to do something so weird on the world’s stage, but Bush never seemed to make some kind of bold leap unless she had a good reason. That way, the music was less about the commercial appeal and more akin to a spirit that was being driven out of her.
So when people look back on the music video and her wild dance moves, they might want to look a little bit closer. Anyone can look at that kind of performance once and think it looks a little bit goofy, but if they start listening to what the song is about, Bush is being fairly on the nose about becoming a borderline puppet for whatever some so-called “commercial music expert” wants to see out of their talent.
