The two songs on which Kate Bush and Prince collaborated
Compared to other big names in rock history, Prince rarely collaborated with other artists on his own material. There may not have been much need for him to, given his ability to perform everything on his records himself, but for fans of the funk and R&B legend, the prospect of him working alongside other stars could have been an exciting one.
Granted, there are songs such as ‘The Arms of Orion’ which he recorded as a duet with Sheena Easton, and he would often bring out guests at live performances to either sing alongside him on his own material or on the odd cover, but rarely did he ever dip his toes into hunkering down in the studio with another accomplished songwriter to work up some magic.
While Prince was working away in his Paisley Park studio estate just outside Minneapolis, on the other side of the Atlantic was another singular songwriter reshaping pop music’s boundaries. Kate Bush had established herself as something of an auteur of pop music throughout the late 1970s and ‘80s, and arguably tested the limits of how far she could push her sound on albums such as The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. Much like Prince, she didn’t make much time for collaborations either, but then again – there wasn’t any need for her to.
You might wonder what could have sparked a collaboration between the two artists, but the two had shared a mutual appreciation for one another’s work for some time prior to their first meeting in 1990. While Prince was on tour and appearing at Wembley Stadium, Bush managed to arrange a backstage rendezvous with the Purple One, and from there, the wheels were set in motion for them to begin an exchange of ideas.
By 1993, the duo had managed to conjure up ‘Why Should I Love You’ for Bush’s album, The Red Shoes, and the track is a remarkable example of how, despite their differing styles, having two geniuses working together in pursuit of a common goal is arguably better than one. The production touches of Prince are present all over, with occasional maximalist bursts of synth and a delectable guitar lick as Bush delivers her trademark wails over the top.
The connection between the two artists was so strong that they felt the need to pursue writing a second song together three years later, with Bush returning the favour by appearing on the Prince track, ‘My Computer’ from the 1996 album Emancipation. Here, Prince slinks into an R&B and neo-soul groove while expressing some ambivalence about the technological world, as Bush delivers some robotic backing vocals befitting of the futuristic themes. It’s not as indicative of both of their talents, but it’s still wonderful to hear them enjoying working together.
There’s always a risk of allowing two individualistic masters of their craft to work together for the fear that the resulting product might be too self-indulgent or complex for mere mortals to comprehend, but these two examples of Prince and Bush coming together are proof that collaborations between acts of this calibre can work incredibly well.
