The classic Kate Bush song that was “so easy to write”
It’s hard to think of an artist with quite as much raw talent as Kate Bush. Penning some of her most defining tracks when she was only a teenager and demonstrating her artistic worth time and time again with each vast new record, her vision was limitless. It seemed to come so easily to her, and one of her biggest hits proved to be just that.
While Bush’s vocal acrobatics and dynamic sounds made her a vibrant and exciting artist, her ability to write the most moving ballads truly secured her place in the world’s hearts. Tracks like ‘Running Up That Hill’ and ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ revealed the artist to have a real way with words when it came to the tricky yet universal feelings of love and heartbreak.
Even though a lot of her work was inspired by books or imaginative fantasy scenarios, occasionally, she would find herself firmly rooted in this world. On ‘This Woman’s Work’, she tackled perhaps the most real and grounded experience of them all: birth and motherhood.
Zooming in on this one experience and all of the huge emotions that come with such a massive event, the track proved surprisingly easy for her to write. It seemed to come to Bush in a split second of inspiration after being asked to pen a track for John Hughes’ film She’s Having A Baby. After seeing the scene that it would soundtrack, the words flew out of her.
“When he sent the piece of film that the song was going to be part of, I just thought it was wonderful, it was so moving, a very moving piece of film. And in a way, there was a sense that the whole film built up to this moment,” Bush said of the experience.
“It was a very easy song to write,” she added. “It was very quick. And just kind of came, like a lot of songs do. Even if you struggle for months, in the end, they just kind of go – BLAH! – You know.”
The track soundtracks a montage of memories in the film. The two parts come together perfectly as ‘This Woman’s Work’ has the kind of wistful and emotive energy to carry the cinematic moment that really hits the heart of its audience.
While the film starts as a typical tale of two expecting parents, it takes a turn as the mother requires emergency surgery during birth. As we see the father pacing in the waiting room, that’s the moment the song kicks in.
“He starts, in his head, going back to the times they were together. There are clips of film of them laughing together and doing up their flat and all this kind of thing. And it was such a powerful visual,” Bush said of the film.
Offering her a different experience of songwriting and having the inspiration right there to work from proved valuable. “It’s one of the quickest songs I’ve ever written. It was so easy to write,” she said. “We had the piece of footage on video, so we plugged it up so that I could actually watch the monitor while I was sitting at the piano and I just wrote the song to these visuals. It was almost a matter of telling the story, and it was a lovely thing to do: I really enjoyed doing it.”
Even without the context of the film, ‘This Woman’s Work’ is without a doubt one of Bush’s most moving tracks, remaining a cinematic masterpiece decades after the movie made it famous.
