FEATURE:
Kate Bush's Never for Ever at Forty-Two
Why Has It Not Received the Same Scrutiny and Acclaim As Her Most Revered Albums?
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MAYBE this steps on the heels…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the photoshoot for Babooshka/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
of my feature stating why Kate Bush’s Never for Ever is underrated. The third studio album from her is forty-two on 8th September. I want to revisit the subject. I am flipping the question and asking why it has not achieved the same celebration, investigation and love as albums such as 1985’s Hounds of Love. Of course, that is a masterpiece that deserves all of its acclaim. I think that Never for Ever has never truly got a platform of featured highly in people’s thoughts. If you know it from songs like Babooshka, does that give a limited or particular view of the album?! A single that is accessible yet distinctly the work of Kate Bush, I wonder whether there was an unhappiness from Bush after she released the album that led her in a completely different direction when it came to producing The Dreaming. That 1982 album is forty on 13th September. She co-produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly. I think that it was a happy experience. Maybe she needed to take a leap and make an album that was more artistic, deep and layered. I have a couple of points to make. In various interviews, Bush has spoken about Never for Ever and how she feels about it.
The Kate Bush Encyclopedia collected together some interviews. It is interesting seeing how Bush’s described the making of Never for Ever through time. I have chosen a couple to highlight:
“It's difficult to talk about the album without you actually hearing it, I suppose it's more like the first album, The Kick Inside, though, than the second, Lionheart, in that the songs are telling stories. I like to see things with a positive direction, because it makes it so much easier to communicate with the audience of listener. When you see people actually listening to the songs and getting into them, it makes you realise how important it is that they should actually be saying something. (...)
There are a lot of different songs. There's no specific theme, but they're saying a lot about freedom, which is very important to me. (Deanne Pearson, The Me Inside. Smash Hits (UK), May 1980)
For me, this was the first LP I'd made that I could sit back and listen to and really appreciate. I'm especially close to Never For Ever. It was the first step I'd taken in really controlling the sounds and being pleased with what was coming back. I was far more involved with the overall production, and so I had a lot more freedom and control, which was very rewarding. Favourite tracks? I guess I'd have to say 'Breathing' and 'The Infant Kiss'. (Women of Rock, 1984)”.
There is nothing to fault about Never for Ever. You can hear how 1979’s The Tour of Life influenced and infused Bush with new energy and impetus. The production is outstanding throughout. Mixing new technology with the Fairlight CMI with interesting instruments; some of her best vocal work and stunning work from her band, this is an eleven-track album that should be adored and respected! The first album by a British female solo artist to top the U.K. album chart, as well as being the first album by any female solo artist to enter the chart at number one, the public clearly loved this album and Kate Bush. After that successful and acclaimed tour the year before, small wonder Never for Ever sold so well. In terms of single performances, Never for Ever fared better than Hounds of Love if you match the singles. Never for Ever’s three singles (Breathing, Babooshka and Army Dreamers) charted higher – if you average them out – than the first three from Hounds of Love (Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting and Hounds of Love). Both Never for Ever and Hounds of Love reached number one in the U.K., and Never for Ever did get some acclaim upon its release. But why is it not put on the same pedestal as an album that, comparatively, did not chart quite as well? Never for Ever features everything you could want from a Kate Bush album!
I can appreciate there is nothing as ambitious and big as Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave (the conceptual suite that forms the second side). Perhaps more conventional than albums like Hounds of Love or 2005’s Aerial, where does Never for Ever sit in the Kate Bush album rankings? SPIN put it at six (out of ten) this year. NME felt similarly in 2019; Far Out Magazine (spelling/grammar issue aside) put it at seven last year; the same position when Classic Rock History ranked the albums this year; LOUDER put it low down the list last year; it got more respect from this blog last month. You see the pattern though! Averaging fifth or sixth when you aggregate the albums, that is far down the order! I know I have ranked her albums before but, as it stands, I would put Never for Ever behind The Kick Inside, Hounds of Love and The Dreaming (Lionheart would come fifth). I know fourth is not much of an improvement, but I do think that Never for Ever will overtake The Dreaming in years to come and claim the bronze! The reason I say that is because, whilst perhaps less technical, accomplished and nuanced as The Dreaming, Never for Ever is easier to digest, more accessible and has these songs that were overlooked at the time but seem stronger now – such as Violin and All We Ever Look For. I also feel Never for Ever is more consistent than The Sensual World (1989), or even the remarkable 50 Words for Snow (2011). I am not sure about Aerial and how it stacks up. The critics prefer it, though I find myself exploring Never for Ever more.
Regardless, my point is that Never for Ever is strong enough to mix with Kate Bush’s very best albums! It is forty-two on 8th September, and I wonder how many people will talk about it. Look at the archived reviews for Never for Ever, and most give it three stars (out of five) or middling grades. One or two mark it higher, and there have not been that many retrospective features and reviews of a tremendous album that features some absolutely golden and classic Kate Bush songs. I would say half of the album at least ranks alongside the best work she has ever produced – Army Dreamers, Breathing, Babooshka, The Wedding List and The Infant Kiss are terrific. As I have done before, I am going to source some exerts from the effusive and detailed feature Pop Matters produced in 2020 to mark Never for Ever’s fortieth anniversary. Even though they are not as glowing about All We Ever Look For as I have been, they note how Never for Ever started a new decade with maturity and extraordinary production. A true original who you cannot compere her to anyone else. At the start of a decade in which she dominated alongside artists such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince, Kate Bush’s Never for Ever has so many gems:
“The Infant Kiss” is one of the highlights of the album, though it, too, is more of a throwback to earlier compositions. The eerie song was inspired by the film The Innocents, which was in turn based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Lyrically, the song is similar to the title track of The Kick Inside and “The Man With the Child in His Eyes” in its dealing with taboo sexuality. The song’s narrator is a governess torn between the love of an adult man and child who inhabit the same body. Or, as one critic called it, “the child with the man in his eyes.”
What sets this song apart is Bush’s production. Instead of overwrought orchestral arrangements of the earlier albums, Bush relies on restrained, baroque instrumentation to convey the song’s conflicted emotions. With Bush behind the boards, she begins to use the studio as an instrument unto itself. Her growing technical facility, combined with the expansive possibilities of the Fairlight and other synthesizers, allowed her to express her feelings through sound more fully.
The penultimate “Army Dreamers” is a lamentation in the form of a waltz, sung from the viewpoint of a mother who’s lost her son in military maneuvers. Here, the samples of gun cocks add a percussive and forbidding element to the arrangement. The sound is restrained but menacing when coupled with the shouts of a commander in the background. Plus, “Army Dreamers” is one of the more political songs in Bush’s repertoire, though situating it inside a personal narrative keeps it from becoming polemical.
The album’s closer, “Breathing”, is a more overtly political song. It was Bush’s crowning achievement at the time, a realization of everything that had led her to this point. The song is told from a fetus’s perspective terrified of being born into a post-apocalyptic world: “I’ve been out before / But this time, it’s much safer in”. Bush plays on the words “fallout” and the rhythmic repetition of breathing—“out-in, out-in”—throughout.
Synthesizer pads and a fretless bass build to a middle section in which sonic textures take precedence over lyrical content, as Bush’s vocals fade to a false ending at the halfway mark. Ominous, atmospheric tones play over a spoken-word middle section describing the flash of a nuclear bomb. The male voice is chilling in its dispassionate delivery, and the bass comes to the foreground once again in a slow march to the finish as the song reaches its final dramatic crescendo. Here, Bush’s vocals, which admittedly can be grating at times, perfectly match the desperation of the lyrics. “Oh, leave me something to breathe!” she cries, in a terrifying contrast to Roy Harper’s monotone backing vocals (“What are we going to do without / We are all going to die without”).
“Breathing” is a full opera in five-and-a-half minutes, written, scored, arranged, and performed by an artist growing into herself and beginning to realize her full potential. It’s a fitting ending for Never for Ever, an album that sees Bush, only 23 years old at the time, leaving behind her ’70s juvenilia. At the turn of the 1980s, she was poised to scale new heights with her music, some of which would define the decade to come”.
Whilst The Dreaming will (I hope) get a tonne of love on and before 13th September to mark its fortieth. I know Hounds of Love will also get a lot of new attention as it is thirty-seven on 16th September. First of all, we celebrate forty-two years of Never for Ever. It is an album that warrants more than a few Twitter mentions. I often feel that, if Bush ever did The Beatles thing and release Deluxe editions of her albums – which seems so far-fetched and impossible! -, you’d get all these great revelations and demos from Never for Ever. Maybe a book to go alongside it; some great insights from musicians who played alongside her. I’d love to hear how Breathing formed and whether we have any alternate takes of a song like Delius (Song of Summer). There is so much to love and unpick when it comes to 1980’s Never for Ever. Such an exciting time for Kate Bush. After a hectic past two years where she was recording and promoting so much, Never for Ever could have been tired or uninspired. As it is, at just twenty-two (when the album came out), we got this leap forward from a very mature and intelligent t artist and producer. A remarkable album from an artist without comparison or equals, Never for Ever is a treasure. I do hope that it gets new reflection and study soon. Far stronger than many have given it credit for, the majestic Never for Ever…
STILL sounds utterly extraordinary.