The story of Kate Bush’s ‘The Ninth Wave’ explained
Once you get past the rip-roaring tour of hits in the first half of Kate Bush’s 1985 record Hounds of Love, a darker story is revealed. Much like on her 2005 album Aerial, Bush dedicates the second side to an extended story, revealing twists and turns with each new song. She welcomes you to The Ninth Wave, Bush’s own titanic story.
Built out of a suite of seven songs, the tracks work together to tell a complete story from start to end. While her work always dealt in the theatrical, and she regularly took on the voice of characters in her albums, The Ninth Wave was her first proper foray into the world of concept recordings. It’s not quite a full LP, but much like other concept records, it’s intended to be heard as one continuous piece.
“The Ninth Wave was a film, that’s how I thought of it,” Bush said of the piece. She explained the plot in 1992 when she dived into the tale of shipwrecks and fear. ”It’s the idea of this person being in the water, how they’ve got there, we don’t know. But the idea is that they’ve been on a ship, and they’ve been washed over the side so they’re alone in this water,” she explained.
Dedicating her own worst nightmare, she added, “I find that horrific imagery, the thought of being completely alone in all this water.”
But The Ninth Wave is less about the act of being shipwrecked and more about the dark places a mind can go when in crisis or danger. “They’re absolutely terrified, and they’re completely alone at the mercy of their imagination, which again, I personally find such a terrifying thing, the power of one’s own imagination being let loose on something like that,” she continued.
The extended piece sees her character gripping at life and desperately trying to stay awake in order to stay alive. It’s an emotional rollercoaster following their various states of fear, distress, and worry.
Taking you through the tale track by track, let’s dive in.
Explaining Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave:
‘And Dream Of Sheep’
“Little light shining, little light will guide him to me,” Bush begins as the track starts up in an instant. Dropping the listener directly into the scene with no context or warning, it’s like we’re pushed into the enveloping ocean to float alongside her protagonist. As her characters bob in their life jackets with torches or a “little light” shining to try and attract help, ‘And Dream Of Sheep’ attempts to navigate the dark and scary feelings of shock and survival.
The track has a dreamlike, lullaby quality as her character battles against tiredness while her body wants to surrender. That fight against sleep is also a fight against giving in. It’s a battle for survival and begging for the survival instinct to kick in harder and keep them awake. “The song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they’re alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time, it’s dangerous to go to sleep in water. You could drown,” Bush said of the song.
She likened the gentle lullaby style to memories of going into her mother’s room, looking for comfort after a nightmare. Around the one-minute mark, a vivid voice says, “Come here with me now”. That’s Bush’s own mother. It’s her voice that marks the start of the story.
‘Under Ice’
The lullaby quality of ‘And Dream Of Sheep’ is immediately unsettled by the jagged strings that open ‘Under Ice’. Similar to the tension of the Jaws theme tune, the track is full of suspense and fear. After her character falls asleep, their trip through nightmare after nightmare as they battle to stay alive against their subconscious begins.
The nightmare in ‘Under Ice’ is harrowing. Feeling the freezing cold water of the sea around her, Bush dreams that she is trapped under a frozen river concealed in the ice. “It’s very lonely, it’s terribly lonely, they’re all alone on like this frozen lake,” Bush said, “And at the end of it, it’s the idea of seeing themselves under the ice in the river, so I mean we’re talking real nightmare stuff here.” As the track ends with a blood-curdling scream of “It’s me!” while voices echo “someone help them”, the character is crying out for help in their dream but also still begging for someone to save them in real life.
‘Waking The Witch’
The nightmares don’t stop there. Subconsciously aware that our protagonist shouldn’t sleep, her brain conjures up all kinds of terrifying images to try and shake her awake. The track opens with an ever-growing crowd of voices, building into utter chaos.
“My mother’s in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench – the guy that mixed the album with us – is in there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices,” Bush said of the cast, “It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says ‘Wake up child, pay attention!’”
Once the voices build to a climax, it gets even more frightening. As the music picks up, a shouting demon comes in, yelling, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” as a nightmarish witch trial occurs. For Bush, this was all about female intuition. Her character’s intuition and inner voice are working overtime to try and get her to wake up and stay alive. It’s a vital and powerful thing that women possess, but it has been demonised or doubted throughout history. Amidst the carnage of the scene and her attempt to survive, her protagonist’s world gets darker.
There is also a watery connection. As witches were drowned during their trials, Bush is implying that her character is slipping under the surface and struggling to stay afloat any longer.
The track ends with a helicopter sound and a booming voice that announces, “get out of the water”. As she slips into utter unconsciousness and deeper danger, there is the suggestion that rescue might be there.
‘Watching You Without Me’
“Now, this poor sod has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they’re kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home,” Bush explained of the song. Having slipped into total unconsciousness, the character imagines their family waiting and wondering where they are.
“Can’t let you know what’s been happening. There’s a ghost in the hall, just watching you without me,” Bush sings. Unable to contact their family or communicate, this is a sonic poem of utter helplessness. Sadly, reminiscent of a person’s last thoughts before they die, the character considers their loved one and the worry they must be feeling.
Much like the idea of floating in the sea, this was a personal hell for Bush. “I find this really horrific,” she said, “these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song.” But there is hope. As the instrumental and backing vocals glitch with strange morse code-like sounds, and as a distorted voice says, “Listen to me, talk to me,” this could be the sound of a rescue team attempting to wake them up.
‘Jig Of Life’
Finally, there is a moment of desperate reprieve. If all the prior songs have been about the body giving in, ‘Jig Of Life’ is a surge of adrenaline that is determined to survive. “At this point in the story, it’s the future self of this person coming to visit them to give them a bit of help here. I mean, it’s about time they have a bit of help,” Bush said of the song.
As the swelling, joyous instrumental borrowed from classic Irish folk gets underway, Bush returns all the energy. “C’mon and let me live, girl!” she repeats over and over as her inner voice demands survival. “it’s their future self saying, ‘Look, don’t give up, you’ve got to stay alive, ’cause if you don’t stay alive, that means I don’t.’ You know, and I’m alive, I’ve had kids,” she explained. “I’ve been through years and years of life, so you have to survive. You mustn’t give up.”
‘Hello Earth’
Beginning with muffled sounds of a rescue team, the track booms to life as Bush declares, “Hello, Earth!” As her character is rescued and pulled up out of the water, the track navigates feelings of relief but also total shock and trauma. It’s not celebratory in the way you’d expect but maintains a level of darkness as a haunting chorus of voices comes in and out, almost like the voices of all those drowned and gone as our protagonist escapes their clutches.
Bush admitted, “‘Hello Earth’ was a very difficult track to write, as well, because it was… in some ways it was too big for me.” How can you write a track about coming back to life and surviving death? As the track rises and falls between orchestral moments of euphoria and creepy choral interludes, Bush attempts to capture the fear that comes with living.
Standing in stark contrast to ‘And Dream Of Sheep’, where the character is looking up at the dark sky, they’re now looking down at earth, trying to make sense of it all. “Get out of the waves! Get out of the water! All you fishermen, head for home,” she sings as a concluding statement on the ordeal as the character is rescued.
‘The Morning Fog’
After the complexity of the rescue, euphoria hits. Suddenly out of all this darkness and weight comes light,” Bush explained. “You know, the weightiness is gone and here’s the morning, and it’s meant to feel very positive and bright and uplifting from the rest of dense, darkness of the previous track.”
As the character wakes up, they see the morning light and realise they’ve been saved. It’s a song of gratitude as they look at their life with a new perspective and a thankfulness for even the smallest things. Listing off her family members and promising to tell them all she loves them, the story ends with a beautiful message of joy and happiness for being alive. It’s a happy ending, after all.
