The 10 most overlooked Kate Bush songs
Few artists can boast a discography as dynamic as Kate Bush’s. With each new album, she unveiled new levels of her talent, the sides of her imagination, and a new sonic landscape through which to articulate it all. From daring storytelling tracks to moving emotional numbers, she did it all and did it all well. But with so much greatness, it’s easy for gold to slip under the radar.
Everyone knows and loves ‘Running Up That Hill’, has cried to ‘This Woman’s Work’, or has been swept up in the rousing gothic rock energy of ‘Wuthering Heights’. All of Kate Bush’s biggest hits are deserving tracks. It’s not like she’s one of those artists whose dimmest or most easily absorbed songs have won out as if her singles have catered to the lowest common denominator. Instead, she’s always managed to remain deeply creative and display the full depth of her fascinating mind while gaining major commercial success.
However, that doesn’t mean all her best tracks get the credit they deserve. Beyond the singles, Bush’s albums are filled with incredible works that show just how vast her range and intrigue took her. From seductive jazz-informed tracks to Irish or Bulgarian influences colouring tense and dramatic rock tracks or from daring topics of warfare and murder to more traditional takes on love, she handles everything with an unmatched stylistic flair and boldness.
Her entire output deserves attention, but these ten tracks especially need to be plucked out of the shadows and cast into the spotlight as a matter of urgency, standing as some of her best yet criminally underrated songs.
10 criminally underrated Kate Bush songs:
‘The Saxophone Song’
On Kate Bush’s debut album, there are several different versions of the singer. There is the 19-year-old who recorded additional songs with the record deal signed and the advance in her band. But there is also a teenager singing some of the first songs she ever wrote, captured initially for a demo tape. ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ is the most famous example of that as the track on The Kick Inside is sung by the singer at 16 as her team knew that take would always be best. But ‘The Saxophone Song’ is another overlooked example of just how early Bush’s talent was on display.
Initially recorded with the help of her family and friends, including one David Gilmour, the version of ‘The Saxophone Song’ heard on the album is the version presented to EMI that secured her the record deal. It’s easy to see why; the track is unique and evocative as Bush’s voice changes between sounding like a jazz singer and sounding like a jazz player’s instrument. It’s not just a celebration of the saxophone as her favourite instrument; she said, “Its sound is very exciting – rich and mellow. It sounds like a female.” But it feels like a celebration of music as a whole, its presence in our social and romantic lives, and Bush’s blossoming presence in the music world.
‘Symphony In Blue’
Bush herself will be the first to brush off Lionheart. After the success of her debut, she felt rushed, as her label was desperate to cash in on her new popularity and get more new music out quickly. Unlike her first album, which was made over the years and essentially crafted across her whole teenage life, Lionheart was made in only a few months. The result was a record that Bush admitted she was “not really happy with”.
As if following her lead, it seems like fans of the musician have overlooked the album, too. But Lionheart houses some fantastic tracks, like the melodrama of ‘Hammer Horror’, the new national anthem of ‘O England My Lionheart’, or the unique approach to pop on ‘Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake’. But it’s ‘Symphony In Blue’ that deserves more love. While the rest of the record goes all in, this song is reserved and balanced to perfection, swaying between smooth, seductive verses with well-crafted climaxes. It’s also richly characterful like all the best Bush songs are.
‘The Wedding List’
But if what you love about Kate Bush is her storytelling songs, it doesn’t get better than ‘The Wedding List’. The track is a full movie in only four minutes and 15 seconds. She introduces her vengeful narrator and follows her as she picks off her targets. Inspired by the 1968 François Truffaut film, The Bride Wore Black, or La Mariée était en noir, it’s about a bride whose husband was shot dead on their wedding day, and her mission to hunt down the men who did it and kill them.
It’s everything Kate Bush does best: melodrama, theatre, storytelling and big, boisterous instrumentals. She nails anger as a complex emotion that’s both seductive and futile, and she navigates this tale of revenge with a good dose of humour. Few other artists could pull a song this conceptual and characterful off, but she makes it look so easy.
‘James and the Cold Gun’
If ‘The Saxophone Song’ was a display of Kate Bush’s early compositional talent, ‘James and the Cold Gun’ was an example of her performance prowess. Even though she decided relatively early in her career to stop performing live, for the years that she did perform and for all the lucky people who got to see her in pubs before her big break, she was electric, and this track was her most exhilarating moment.
The song is built for it. It feels like one of her most outright rock and roll songs as she handles the topic of warfare with a honky tonk flair and some huge guitars. On stage, it seemed to be a track she could lose herself in. Brian Bath, a member of her early group, The KT Bush Band, recalled, “Rob got a dry ice machine from somewhere. We used that on stage for ‘James And The Cold Gun’ and it looked great. We had a bit of a show going! Kate did a costume change, she’d put on a bloomin’ Western cowgirl dress for the second set! The theatrical thing was starting to get there.” From those small-time pubs to the vast Hammersmith Apollo, this track remained a performance piece as her interpretive routine during the song’s outro is a must-see for fans.
‘Night Of The Swallow’
By the time it came to making her fourth album, The Dreaming, Bush had taken the reigns. There was no more sharing the control seat as she began to fully produce her albums to ensure each and every detail was as she wanted it, and the result was some of her most theatrical and experimental works yet. Sales-wise, The Dreaming is her least popular release. She’s since joked that the record was her “she’s gone mad album” due to its eclectic and often odd musical choices.
But ‘Night Of The Swallow’ is something special. It’s desperate and gothic as Bush pushes her voice to the absolute limits, moving between some of the softest singing ever heard from the singer into belts that sound more like screams of pure pain and pleading. Recorded with a band of Irish instrumentals, it breaks into a musical climax that feels like it sets the scene for the Hounds Of Love track ‘The Jig Of Life’. But as they meander through all kinds of different sounds and melodies, with the song twisting and turning into all kinds of different sections, it’s one of Bush’s most fascinating creations.
‘Mother Stands For Comfort’
Hounds Of Love is one of the greatest albums ever made; don’t even try to argue. But with so many golden tracks in one place and with the incredible storytelling power of the Ninth Wave suite on the second side, it’s easy for certain songs to be overlooked. Sandwiched between ‘The Big Sky’ and ‘Cloudbusting’, ‘Mother Stands For Comfort’ never stood a chance, but it deserves just as much of a spotlight.
As far as Bush’s storytelling goes, this is perhaps one of her most subtle. It’s one of those songs that doesn’t announce its meaning too boldly, but instead, its power lies in its more open-ended. It could be about deceit at its more basic or broadest, but as always, Bush has a specific vision for it. It’s only when diving into the lyrics that the chilling feeling of its instrumental makes sense, revealing the story of the mother of a murderer grappling with the actions of her child while still protecting them. Who else could handle such nuance with such style? Who else could take something so specific and make it feel so open to all? No one but Kate Bush.
‘Breathing’
Forget ‘Running Up That Hill’, ‘Wuthering Heights’, and ‘This Woman’s Work’. I want to know why ‘Breathing’ isn’t Kate Bush’s biggest song. Imagine it’s the year 1980. Cold War tensions are bubbling still. In four years, Threads will be released, making the nation even more terrified of Nuclear War, but for now, Kate Bush has just released ‘Breathing’, a haunting, harrowing, yet genius track.
‘Breathing’ is about nuclear war, yes, but she sings about it from the perspective of an unborn baby in her mother’s womb. Removing it from politics or from adult thoughts on warfare, instead, her vantage point is simple and naive, highlighting the vulnerability of violence on this scale. Reading the lyrics is like reading a war poem that kids should study in school as she sings, “Chips of Plutonium / Are twinkling in every lung”, and imagines this baby “breathing my mother in” during a battle to survive.
But the power of the track comes with its climax. It goes quiet for a while as a religious choir hums a haunting tune before field recordings of information about nuclear bombs are played out as the instrumental builds and builds to a loud boom. “Oh, God, please leave us something to breathe!” begs in what feels like music’s boldest and most visceral take on the topic.
‘Rocket’s Tail’
Featuring a Bulgarian vocal group and a roaring guitar solo from David Gilmour, the instrumental of ‘Rocket’s Tail’ makes it so special. At first, it seems to fizz and crackle as if newly lit, swelling in tension into the firework finally blows and booms with a big, rocky breakthrough.
Bush was always a master as tempo changes and melody shifts, but ‘Rocket’s Tail’ is a painfully overlooked example of that. Her vocal performance is stunning, but it’s simply the thrill of the song’s build and instrumental that makes it so electric as listeners can only watch on, awed by the masterful swells, soars and breaks in the song.
‘Why Should I Love You?’
OK, maybe trying to claim any song off The Red Shoes is overrated and a bit rich, given that it was one of her most commercially successful releases and a true opus. But how on earth Kate Bush made a song with Prince and didn’t even release it as a single is beyond.
Yes, Prince is on this song. In the years before The Red Shoes, the two musicians had both been major admirers of one another, existing as two artists who would only ever do things their way, and both strictly followed their unique visions. So when they met in 1990, it all made sense. Bush asked him to contribute to this song, sending him the full recorded and ready version. But in typical Prince fashion, what he sent back was a fully reworked version with his recognisable guitar and vocal flair heard throughout.
The fact that a collaboration between two of history’s most creative talents could exist on an album and still be overlooked is insane. But the ability to have Prince on a song and still hold all the spotlight on you is a testament to Bush’s unmatched talent.
‘An Endless Sky Of Honey’
Got 42 minutes to spare? Get a drink, put headphones on, sit down and hit play because not a single second spent indulging in Kate Bush’s conceptual opus is wasted. While some might think Hounds Of Love is her finest example of storytelling across tracks, it’s actually this as ‘An Endless Sky Of Honey’ turns the process of the sky changing from day to night to day again into a theatrical masterpiece.
Taking up the whole of the second half of her 2005 album Aerial, released after a 20-year-long hiatus from music, ‘An Endless Sky Of Honey’ was proof that her creativity never faltered or stalled. Making up a major part of her 2014 comeback live shows as well, it’s clear that it’s a piece of music that means a lot to her, and it’s a triumph. From the luxurious, sun-soaked beauty of tracks like ‘An Architect’s Dream’ that marks the start of the day, the vibrant colour of ‘Sunset’, through to the moody darkness of ‘Nocturn’, Bush captures the sky in perfect sound. However, opt for the 2018 remaster, where Kate Bush’s son Bertie replaced the regrettable original casting of Rolf Harris…
