FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Four
IN THIS PHOTO: An unused shot of Kate Bush taken for an NME cover feature in September 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins
The Lead-Up to Her Sixth Studio Album
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IN the final feature…
celebrating the upcoming thirty-fourth anniversary of Kate Bush’s The Sensual World, I want to look at the background and lead-up to its release. It came out on 17th October, 1989, where it reached number two in the U.K. I have already put in some interviews where Bush was discussing the album and her inspirations. I think people assume that she went quiet after 1985’s Hounds of Love. She was releasing singles from it but, by 1986, there must have been people wondering when another album would come out. Four years after her masterpiece, Bush came back with another astonishing album – albeit one that sounded very different. Thanks to this website, The Garden, who have compiled a timeline of Bush’s life and career from 1958-1990. I will interrupt certain sections. But let us pick up the baton from late-1986. Her greatest hits album, The Whole Story, came out then. Apologies for any incorrect dates there might be. The source is pretty reliable, so most should be okay. They do say that Bush interrupted the filming of her video for Experiment IV on 9th November to attend party at the Video Cafe organised by the Kate Bush Club and Homeground. I think Experiment IV came out as a single in October, 1986, so it may have been the case it came out and the video followed after The Whole Story was released. Anyway, for those wondering where Bush would go after 1985’s Hounds of Love, she answered their question the following year:
“November 10, 1986
The Whole Story, the first Kate Bush compilation album, is released. It is promoted by the most expensive TV advertising campaign EMI has ever mounted. Sales are massive.
1987
Despite reservations by Kate herself, EMI resolves to release a video compilation of The Whole Story. Again, sales are enormous. The worldwide commercial success of the album is greater than that of any of her earlier albums.
Meanwhile, Kate dives into the recording of a new studio album.
To date, the main part of Kate's creative activity since the middle of 1986 remains a mystery.
It does appear that Hounds of Love promotion took her through 1985 and a lot of 1986. Given the fact she put most of her all into that album, perhaps she needed some time to relax. Too much pressure on artists putting something out right after their current album. Songs for a new album would have been forming, though I don’t think there was much in the way of plans for new music until 1987. That is the year when Hounds of Love’s work was very much done. She could look ahead to the next chapter.
February 1987
Kate appears at the 1987 British Phonographic Industry Awards, and this time wins the competition for Best Female Singer, despite the fact that the album for which she won was released more than a year earlier.
Kate also wins in the same category of the U.S. College Music Awards and accepts the award in a brief comic film shot at her home in England.
Kate records an original song for the Nicholas Roeg film Castaway, called Be Kind to My Mistakes.
March 28/29, 1987
Kate performs Running Up That Hill and Let It Be live with David Gilmour at Amnesty International's Secret Policeman's Third Ball concerts.
March 1987
Kate does some session work for the second album by Go West, called Dancing on the Couch: she sings backing vocals on the track The Kind is Dead. She also contributes vocals to a single release of Let It Be, the proceeds from which are targeted for the families of the victims of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster.
1987 was a very busy year. After winning an award for an album that was, at this time, quite old showed how much love there was for Kate Bush. She definitely didn’t quibble! There would have been a lot of demands on Bush’s shoulders after Hounds of Love’s success and huge reviews. She was approached for Castaway but turned the role down. From the look of the film and the fact Oliver Reed was in it, she dodged a big bullet there!
Even though The Sensual World came out in 1989, one of its best-known songs, This Woman’s Work, started life much earlier. It appeared on a film soundtrack. A rare occasion of Bush giving movie-goers a taste of new music that would then appear on a studio album:
Kate also writes and records a song called This Woman's Work for the John Hughes film She's Having a Baby, which is finally released in February 1988.
late 1987
Kate agrees to lend her name to a new vegetarian campaign launched by the Vegetarian Society to publicise excessive cruelties within specific areas of the meat trade.
1988
Publication of The Kate Bush Club Newsletter is suspended pending the release of Kate's still-unfinished sixth studio album.
Kate attends a concert by Davy Spillane, an Irish musician formerly of the band Moving Hearts, who contributes uillean pipes tracks to Kate's new album. She also attends concerts by the Momentary Lapse of Reason incarnation of Pink Floyd, and by violinist Nigel Kennedy.
April 1, 1988
A report is printed in The Guardian that Kate has taken on a lead role in the longrunning television series Dr. Who. The date of the report is overlooked by some fans.
Lots of weird and wonderful happenings! There was definitely anticipation of a new album in 1988. Perhaps there was this sort of speculation that was not answered until the following year. I like the fact that Bush was rumoured to be in Dr. Who! She must have got all sort of T.V. and film offers, so this one is not a surprise. I sort of hear elements of Dr. Who’s eeriness and science fiction in some of the songs that appeared on The Dreaming and Hounds of Love.
July 30, 1988
Kate celebrates her thirtieth birthday by participating in an AIDS charity project involving some 200 celebrities. She serves as a shopkeeper for the day at Blazer's boutique.
August 22, 1988
Kate comments on London for a BBC2 television programme, Rough Guide to Europe.
September 1988
Midge Ure releases a new album, which features a guest duet vocal with Kate on the track Sister and Brother.
Fall 1988
After making contact with Joe Boyd, co-producer of the Balkana compilation album of traditional Bulgarian vocal music, Kate travels to Bulgaria to meet with Yanka Rupkina, Eva Georgieva and Stoyanka Boneva, nationally famous soloists who perform and record together under the group name Trio Bulgarka. Meeting again with the Bulgarians in England, Kate records three vocal tracks with Trio Bulgarka for the sixth album, and makes an appearance with the Bulgarian vocalists for a video-taped segment of the BBC series Rhythms of the World, which is broadcast in the spring of 1989.
That was quite an important passage of time. Spending her thirtieth birthday in a typically unselfish way, she has already got this plan to use the Trio Bulgarka in her music. You can hear and see more about this fascinating part of her career. Going to Bulgaria and facing that language barrier. I think it was her brother Paddy that brought the Trio Bulgarka to Bush’s attention. They add something otherworldly to the songs they appear on! They would be recruited once more for The Sensual World’s follow-up album, The Red Shoes.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with the Trio Bulgarka
Summer 1989
Kate appears briefly in a video for a worldwide television programme about ecological issues called Our Common Future. She is seen in a London studio with many other artists, singing two lines from a song written for the programme (not by Kate). The song is called Spirit of the Forest. The programme, with the pre-recorded video, is aired on June 4, 1989.
There is also a report that Kate appeared at the United Nations with Peter Gabriel and other artists in support of the campaign to save the rain forests; but as of presstime this report had not been confirmed.
Kate's sixth studio album is finally finished at the end of May.
You can see that Kate Bush was pretty busy in the lead-up to The Sensual World being released. I like the fact that she was engaged in charity work in addition to making music. Very typical of her! There must have been that excitement in the summer when she had the album complete. As it did not come out until October 1989, there was the business of selecting the first single. This Woman’s Work and Love and Anger were second and third. There was no doubting which track would be the lead single (worth checking out this long version, as there are some nice clips of Kate Bush).
Fall 1989
Kate's new single, The Sensual World, is released on September 18th, and her sixth studio album, The Sensual World, is released at last on October 16th. The video for the first single is debuted during the week of September 15th. Meanwhile Kate's new U.S. label, Columbia Records, decides to release Love and Anger as their first Kate Bush single, and Kate, apparently trusting the company's knowledge of the American market, must rush to produce an accompanying video.
Back in England, the new single debuts at number 12 in the Music Week/Gallup chart, sinking to number 15 its second week; but the BMIRC chart tells a quite different story, listing the single's chart debut as number 16, but placing the record at number 10 the second week.
The album does rather poorly in England, mainly for two reasons: the radio stations' refusal to play the music, and Kate's unwillingness to offer any more than minimal support for the record. She makes no personal signing appearances, and makes only a few brief television appearances”.
It is interesting that there was this bit of a shift after Hounds of Love. Maybe less commercial, The Sensual World was maybe not as marketable. It is considered one of her best album, though you can appreciate that people may have not been able to get their head around the sonic shifts and differences between the two albums.
1990
In the U.S., the single Love and Anger has considerable college and alternative-market success, and its accompanying video is aired often by MTV. Unfortunately Kate's new U.S. label, Columbia Records, fails to offer more than nominal support for the album, and as a result its phenomenal commercial potential--indicated in dozens of alternative rock charts throughout the nation--is completely wasted, and the album never becomes known to the general record-buying public. It is unable to crack the top forty, but it does have a remarkable longevity, remaining in the Billboard Top 200 for a total of six full months. A golden opportunity has been squandered by Columbia.
In response to the unusual college interest, in January Kate finally does make a brief trip to New York in support of the album, but she does not schedule nearly as many interviews as she had done in 1985, and she makes no personal appearances. As a result, she is seen only extremely briefly on U.S. national news, and in five or six ten-second (that's right, ten-second!) interview "sound-bites" on MTV in January and February. (She also gives a twenty-minute phone-in interview, in which a large number of radio disc jockeys joined in for a conference call and ask a large number of too-familiar questions.).
That interesting life Love and Anger had in the U.S. and the fact The Sensual World could have been a huge album there. Maybe Bush was a little fatigued with the promotion she did for Hounds of Love. It would be another four years until she put out The Red Shoes. I am covering that for a run of features at the moment. Regardless, you can see what Bush endured and undertook after Hounds of Love and before. Now seen as one of her masterpieces, The Sensual World turns thirty-four on 17th October. If you are someone who has not listened to it in a while, I think you will get a lot out of it. A rich album that has so many wonderful songs, carve some time out to investigate and absorb…
KATE Bush’s 1989 gem.