FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Four
IMAGE CREDIT: Classic Album Art
A Collectable and Magnificent Thing
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THAT title may seem vague…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
but, as Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, turns forty-four on Thursday (17th), I wanted to mop up and conclude my run of features about the album by highlighting its pluses and brilliance. In previous features, I have dropped in reviews and discussed how The Kick Inside remains underrated. As I look to its forty-fourth anniversary, I know a lot of people will take to social media and mark that occasion. I wanted to use feature to urge anyone who does not own the album to go and get it. One can get the U.K. vinyl, though there are international versions of the album that are worth collecting. I have said how the Japanese edition is the one I want, as I love the photo of Bush on it. Rather than The Kick Inside being marked a s promising debut on its anniversary, it needs to be seen as an album that every Kate Bush fan should own and savour. Not just an L.P. with a few good tracks, it is a powerful and consistent work that has inspired so many people. I am going to end with an article that expounds and highlights the virtues of The Kick Inside. To me, it is an album that is an important piece of music history. The first album by an undoubtable icon and musical genius, it is fascinating listening to the songs and how assured Bush is. I would suggest people compile a deep cuts playlist of tracks from The Kick Inside, as they do not get shared that much.
I am a huge fan of all Kate Bush’s work, but I think The Kick Inside is so meaningful because it is an album that started it all. As a teen one could forgive Bush for being unsure or lacking in real assuredness. On the contrary, she is an artist doing things nobody else was. If you are a big fan of the album, it is worth trying to get it on cassette. I am a big fan of the time Bush recorded the album and the promotion she did. From the De Efteling special in May 1978 to T.V. and print interviews, she was traveling afar and doing so much! For those who feel The Kick Inside does not have the same sort of impact and reach as Hounds of Love, it is worth thinking about how incredible the album is and how it is so distinct. I will return to a Stereogum feature from 2018. They marked forty years of The Kick Inside by, among other things, exploring why it such a remarkable and influential document:
“Her groundbreaking legacy of experimental yet accessible, inspiringly individualistic work begins with the extraordinary debut album that turns 40 this weekend: The Kick Inside. Released when Bush was 19 in 1978, it included songs she had written as early as age 13 and introduced the world into Bush’s wild imagination. Arriving in a year otherwise dominated by disco and punk (“Wuthering Heights” replaced Abba’s “Take A Chance On Me” as the UK’s #1 single) this imagination felt “strangely out of time” and singular. The album’s focus on female sexuality, its use of voice as an instrument, and Bush’s unique storytelling techniques — particularly her exciting use of fluid narrative identity, in which she changes identities and narrative point of view with every song — created a new, unprecedented model for women in music. The Kick Inside (referred to as TKI from now on) made the world a safer place not just for women musicians but also for freaks and outcasts everywhere, and its anniversary is well worth celebrating.
TKI is also revolutionary because it establishes Bush’s narrative style as fluid and multiple; her songs are short stories each written from a different narrator’s perspective rather than from her own point of view. This writing style stands in stark contrast to the traditionally personal style of music focusing on love and heartbreak that continues to dominate the charts. “I often find myself inspired by unusual, distorted, weird subjects, as opposed to things that are straightforward. It’s a reflection of me, my liking for weirdness,” she said in 1980. Unlike the majority of pop/rock artists, The “I” in Bush’s music is rarely Bush. Her songs are not confessional, but are rather short stories told from the points of views of a diverse range of narrators. From Bush’s songs, we can know about themes that interest her, but Kate Bush herself rarely speaks in her work; her narrators, who occupy multiple genders, races, and historical times, do instead. This is a deeply radical break from traditional “confessional “ songwriting, especially for women up to that point. Consider that the most acclaimed female musician of the time, and probably of all time, Joni Mitchell, is most-lauded for her confessional album, Blue.
Perhaps most importantly, beginning with The Kick Inside she has inspired a wide array of artists to “let the weirdness in.” Lady Gaga covered Bush’s duet with Peter Gabriel, “Don’t Give Up,” because she wanted to “make something that young people would hear and learn something about Kate Bush”, and her theatricality has its roots in Bush’s so-bizarre-they’re-brilliant live performances. Björk frequently cites Bush as a pivotal influence on her musical “form”, saying “I remember being underneath my duvet at the age of 12, fantasising about Kate Bush,” and even sent Bush of a demo of herself covering Bush’s “Moving” in 1989. Lorde played “Running Up That Hill” before the shows on her Melodrama tour, and Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan said of Bush, “As an artist myself, [she’s] helped me to not be frightened to put my vulnerability as a woman [in my work] and in that, be powerful.”
Bush’s influence is also felt in hip-hop, especially due to her early use of sampling, best seen in her sampling of the Gregorian chanting from Werner Herzog’s film Nosfertu The Vampyre in Hounds Of Love’s “Hello Earth.” One of her biggest champions is OutKast’s Big Boi, who has repeatedly called her “my favorite artist of all time,” and Tricky from Massive Attack said of Bush’s song “Breathing,” which features the line “breathing my mother in,”: “I’m a kid from a council flat, I’m a mixed-raced guy…totally different life to Kate Bush, but that lyric, ‘breathing my mother in,’ my whole career’s based on that.” Even Chris Martin “admitted” that Coldplay’s “Speed Of Sound” “was developed after the band had listened to Kate Bush”.
On its anniversary, I wanted to end with a feature that explains why I love The Kick Inside. From the various different covers to the way The Kick Inside is still undervalued and full of real revelations and excellence. There is no doubting the importance of Kate Bush’s debut and how arresting, beautiful and compelling its songs are. The fact many other artists have been influenced by it shows what a strong debut it was. The Kick Inside is talked about daily. This is something that will continue…
FOR the rest of time.