Kate Bush - The Whole Story

MINE

This greatest hits CD misses some of the songs I would have included - but it's damn fine anyway. The Kick Inside and Lionheart were soundtracks to much of my teenage years, and Bush was - and still is - a huge role model for so many women. Not just a singer, a dancer, a songwriter, a musician, amazingly attractive, not a bimbo.... the list goes on. And Wuthering Heights meant so much to me - singing as she did about one of my teenage heroines - Catherine Earnshaw. It finally made sense to be a literature nerd who was into modern dance!

I'd have been happier if the compilation had included Hammer Horror from Lionheart and her duet with Peter Gabriel - Don't Give Up. But listening to it has reminded me how classic, and at the same time contemporary her music remains. Samples and covers of her work over the years by artists as varied as Utah Saints and Natalie Cole show how relevant she remains to this day.

And personally - the outfit she wore for the video of Hammer Horror totally informed my dress choice for the end-of-year school dance that year.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP


YOURZ

Kate Bush only came to existence in my world from a single, memorable point - the first time I saw the film clip for Babooshka. Oh sure, I remember her first single, the annoyingly catchy Wuthering Heights, but only because it came out around the same time I had to read the book at school. If anything, she saved me from having to read the bloody thing.

At the time, I was more interested in bands like Kiss and Sabbath to pay much more than cursory notice to the woman singing, apart from remembering her prancing around in the moors somewhere. All this changed with Babooshka.

Suddenly, those raging hormones in my 17 year old body stiffened and made it hard for me to even breathe. My hand and I became more than just friends while I took off Kate’s armour again and again and again (well, I was young then).

A number of years later, in my guise as sensitive young man, I cultivated an appreciation of Ms. Bush’s tunes, if only to pursue and conquer a number of more accessible objects of lust. But Ms Bush became one of those creepy commonalities between all the girls I liked and loved, including Mine.

I don’t hate her. How could I hate any one who informed my lust so well. But this is the sort of music that highlights the differences in taste between me and Mine. Viva la difference, I say.

VERDICT: TURN IT DOWN

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