The 1972 song Kate Bush called one of her all time favourites: “It was really exciting”
Kate Bush didn’t have to concern herself with making some of the best pop songs ever made.
She was more interested in toying with where pop music could go every single time she walked into the studio, and you can hear every single one of her albums was a nice reactive direction to see just what the hell someone was allowed to get away with whenever they walked into the studio. And while Bush did have a signature sound that everyone could recognise, she revelled in the idea of mixing things up and giving her audience what they didn’t realise they wanted every time she performed.
Because no one in their right mind would have thought that someone could have made an album that sounded as strange as The Dreaming back in the day. Bush’s sound was already a progressive form of pop music that no one had ever touched on, but after turning away from the touring life for the last time, it was time for her to start using the studio like she always wanted to. Her greatest strong suit was making songs intentionally strange, and while Lionheart already had more than a few classics across its runtime, it wasn’t until the 1980s that she really started to find her footing.
Hounds of Love was the moment where no one could really deny her anymore, and even when she was working with some more outlandish ideas on later records like The Sensual World, it was as if the world gave her a pass. It was nowhere near what the public had expected, but after having someone like Prince and David Gilmour play on your record, you’re already working with a roster of musicians that are better than most people would ever be.
But even by her standards, Bush would have never imagined working with someone like Elton John. John was the entire reason why she wanted to make music in the first place, so when she got the opportunity to work on a tune like ‘Rocketman’ for a covers album, she wanted to make sure that she didn’t fade into the background with all the other faithful covers of John’s space-age ballad.
Anyone could make a traditional ballad, but if you were told what a version of Kate Bush doing an Elton John song would sound like, would reggae be on your radar? Well, it damn well better, because Bush managed to turn one of her favourite tunes inside out and pull it off perfectly. No one would have thought that an entire song about voyaging to new lands needed a ukulele version, but Bush felt that she wanted to do justice to the tune in a much more thoughtful way.
For all she knew, this could have been the last time that she covered one of John’s songs, so she wanted the chance to make everyone hear it in a different light, saying, “Elton and Bernie Taupin were putting together an album called ‘Two Rooms’, which was a collection of cover versions of their songs, each featuring a different singer. To my delight they asked me to be involved and I chose ‘Rocket Man’. They gave me complete creative control and although it was a bit daunting to be let loose on one of my favourite tracks ever, it was really exciting.”
And it’s not like John wasn’t paying attention right back. John had been a fan of all kinds of music since he was a kid, and since he never stopped checking in on the charts, Bush actually managed to come in handy for him as well when he was at his lowest moment addictionwise and got a massive boost from hearing tunes like ‘Don’t Give Up’ on the radio.
Bush may have started out as a wide-eyed kid trying her best to make the tunes that her idols were making, but the fact that she could reduce John to tears with one of her songs was her way of coming full circle. No one would have imagined that she would have got to this point through the power of reggae, but it does make a little bit of sense. ‘Rocket Man’ is all about searching for new lands, and Bush kept on searching for new sonic landscapes wherever she could.
