Why Kate Bush felt “pressured” into making some of her classics
In what surely stands as one of the most impressive debuts of all time, Kate Bush hadn’t even hit 20 years old when 1978’s chamber pop spectacle ‘Wuthering Heights’ shot to the top of the UK charts, marking the arrival of one of the nation’s most visionary and influential artists.
Yet, with overnight success came top-down pressure to hurry along a sophomore LP that same year. Nine months after The Kick Inside had entered the top ten, EMI put the pressure on for Bush to mine the collection of songs stockpiled since her early teens and rush-record the Lionheart follow-up at France’s Super Bear Studios.
While boasting the dramatic ‘Wow’, much of the album felt like a retread, an album unleashed to the wild out of obligation rather than a considered artistic statement.
Bush ensured her third album would either fail or win on her own terms. Stepping further into the producer’s role and first utilising the trusty Fairlight CMI synthesizer to expand her sonic terrain, 1980’s Never for Ever would trigger a run of ethereal and inventive pop albums, finally afforded the emerging digital hardware and evolving recording innovations that ran apace with her ambitious songcraft. By 1985’s Hounds of Love, Bush appeared to inhabit an entire genre unto its own.
Such aural sculpture and dense layering of sound would reach its apex on 1989’s The Sensual World, before taking a step back toward a more organic live approach for The Red Shoes four years later. Both albums had nagged Bush for years, however, owing to an unwitting lean on the studio trends of the day. Such perceived undercooked cuts in her songbook prompted Bush to consider revisiting the offending numbers and better realise for a new generation.
“I guess I just kind of felt like there were songs on those two albums that were quite interesting, but that they could really benefit from having new life breathed into them,” Bush told Interview in 2011. “I don’t really listen to my old stuff, but on occasion, I would either hear a track on the radio or a friend might play me one, and there was generally a bit of an edgy sound to it, which was mainly due to the digital equipment that we were using, which was state of the art at the time—and I think everyone felt pressured to be working that way”.
Bush delivered the world her definitive revisions on 2011’s Director’s Cut. Promoted by the renewed ‘Deeper Understanding’, Bush was able to reimagine the gems that lay buried underneath the clumsy galumph of the heavy-handed production trends of the day with the finesse they always deserved. It’s arguable whether anything from The Sensual World needed such polish, but The Red Shoes’ dated character is distinctly more noticeable 30-odd years on.
“What I wanted to do was empty them out and let the songs breathe more,” Bush furthered. Shining a light on a chapter of her work and career that may enjoy less attention than her earlier efforts, Director’s Cut, if anything, stood as another attestment to Bush’s artistic perfectionism that’s served her well through nearly 50 years of marrying pop with art.
