Kate Bush Got Me Through This Week - April 16th, 2024
It's Kate Bush Week. Dance Accordingly.
Ari & Pete’s love language is Kate Bush songs.
This can either be incredibly endearing, or it might derail a very emotional and serious conversation we were having with you.
So, instead of bombarding your phone with YouTube/Spotify/Apple Music links, we've decided to limit ourselves to one Kate Bush song this week(ish1).
We'll include a lil’ essay about the song, followed by a link, and that's it. You're done. Perhaps you'll tap the link and listen to the song, maybe you'll love it, or perhaps you'll listen and think, “Babooshska.”
This Kate Bush Song Got Pete Through The Week
Kate Bush - “Why Should I Love You?”
A Collection of Random Thoughts and Trivia That Popped Into My Head When I listened to this song all week:
1.
I came late to Kate Bush. I only knew her tangibly because she was sampled or covered by artists I liked.
2.
I only became a fan because an ex-girlfriend played her music constantly for the six months we were together.
3.
Until then, Kate Bush meant nothing to me except that I thought she was the British Stevie Nicks.
4.
I was wrong.
5.
The first time I heard “Why Should I Love You?” It put me in a trance, and for some bizarre reason, I felt like this song had to be performed on The Muppet Show stage.
For some reason, it conjured the same chaotic energy of Rita Moreno dancing to Fever or Elton John and felt Alligators singing Crocodile Rock.
6.
“Why Should I Love You” is widely considered the Kate Bush song Prince ruined. Yes, if it felt Prince-y that’s because he sings background vocals, plays Bass and does the Guitar solo.
7.
Most of her fans felt that this was a big departure for Bush and felt that Prince came in and made it feel like a Prince song. However, you can hear the original demo, and all Prince did was make it go hard as fuck.
8.
To me, the only thing that seems indebted to Prince is that in the Lyrics to the song, bush alternates between “I” and “Eye”
The "E" of my eye
The eye in wonder
The eye that sees
The "I" that loves you
9.
I've been lucky to date almost exclusively cool-ass people, and the gifts they left me with have always made my life better.
Whether it was a skincare routine2, an appreciation of René Gruau, or realizing that poetry isn't pretentious3 or long, almost letter-like Facebook messages.
10.
Listening to Kate Bush again after the breakup took me a while. It wasn’t a good one and lasted a bit longer than either of us would have liked. But for some reason, I think it made it easier to dip back in because she wasn’t a fan of this song. This was, at the very least, my Kate Bush song.
11.
There's a great cover of this song by the Water Boys. There are surprisingly few good covers of Kate Bush, but this one is so bizarre that it works.
12.
I've never figured out what this song is about. But here are a few guesses:
That is precisely what the title says.
Actual flirtation with Catholicism
An ex coming back and trying to make a case to get back together
A Kate Bush version of Nat King Cole's LOVE
A song from the point of view of a cat to its owner.
Or from the owner to a cat.
13.
I know she's had a renaissance in the last few years, and that's amazing. More people should get to know Kate Bush without getting their heart broken.
Pete DeCourcy (He/Him) is a writer based in Toronto, Canada. He has written for stage and screens (Phone, iPad, TV, Billboards, etc.) He has always been a coward. His lack of musical skill is why the not-quite-a-podcast-not-quite-a-mixtape Ambient Noise Between Friends sounds like that.
This Kate BushSong Got Ari Through The Week
Kate Bush - “The Big Sky”
Radio Edit
Meteorological Mix (Extended)
While “Running Up That Hill” and “Cloudbusting” tend to get all the love, my current favorite track off of Kate Bush’s 1985 classic Hounds of Love is “The Big Sky.” The third track on the album, “The Big Sky,” follows the smash-hit “Running Up That Hill” and the propulsive “Hounds of Love.” On “Big Sky,” Kate’s voice soars along with the synth, propelling us into a place of expansion and personal freedom—which is the exact emotional journey I want to go on after the first two tracks of the album, which are about misunderstandings in love (“Running Up That Hill”) and the ways our childhood trauma impact our current behavior (“Hounds of Love”), thus creating the perfect punch into catharsis.
For me, “The Big Sky” is a song about feeling misunderstood but freeing oneself to be and exist exactly as you are. It’s about being someone who lives in creative abundance and who is always looking at the world’s bigger picture. Who is ready to ride out life’s ever-shifting waves—yet who is also surrounded by those who are so caught up in their own minutiae, they misunderstand your more expansive vision of life and may even dismiss it as foolish and childlike. In issue 18 of the Kate Bush Club newsletter, Kate herself states:
[The song is about] someone sitting looking at the sky, watching the clouds change. I used to do this a lot as a child, just watching the clouds go into different shapes. I think we forget these pleasures as adults. We don’t get as much time to enjoy those kinds of things, or think about them; we feel silly about what we used to do naturally. The song is also suggesting the coming of the next flood – how perhaps the ‘fools on the hills’ will be the wise ones.
“The Big Sky” begins by contrasting the speaker’s broader, more imaginative perspective with that of others who spend their lives metaphorically looking down at their own feet:
They look down
At the ground
Missing
But I never go in now
I’m looking at the big sky[…]
You never understood me
You never really tried
Then, using imagery of Noah’s ark, Kate launches into a warning:
Blow [that cloud] a kiss now
But quick
‘Cause it’s changing in the big sky[…]
This cloud, this cloud
Says Noah
C’mon and build me an ark
And if you’re coming, jump
‘Cause we’re leaving with the big sky
Kate’s flood imagery serves as both a prophecy and an invitation. It is as though she is simultaneously warning, “Hey! Don’t just stand there, stuck in your own reality—it’s time for us to get out of here, or else you’re going to drown!” while also inviting the listener to come build a new future—a metaphorical ark—with her. She leaves the decision, however, entirely up to the listener: while they’re welcome to join her in building something together that will help them both travel safely into the unknown, they are alternatively welcome to keep looking at their feet—or the “clouds”—and miss their ride. Either way, Kate—the “fool on the hill” who is looking at the big sky and inventing new ways of being—is getting out of there, and will ride her ark all the way to freedom.
Considering that “Big Sky” comes on the heels of “Running Up That Hill” and “Hounds of Love”—two songs that feel searchingly internal and painfully honest about one’s own inability to see beyond one’s own perspective—“Big Sky” feels like freedom itself. She acknowledges that the listener never really understood her. She acknowledges they never really tried. Yet Kate will keep looking at the big sky—because, understand her or not, she knows where she’s going, and she’s getting there regardless. Take it or leave it!
Interestingly, Kate has stated this was a very difficult song for her to finish—perhaps because of its expansiveness. In a November 1985 interview with Tony Myatt, Kate said:
‘The Big Sky’ gave me terrible trouble, really, just as a song. I mean, you definitely do have relationships with some songs, and we had a lot of trouble getting on together and it was just one of those songs that kept changing – at one point every week – and, um…It was just a matter of trying to pin it down. Because it’s not often that I’ve written a song like that: when you come up with something that can literally take you to so many different tangents, so many different forms of the same song, that you just end up not knowing where you are with it. And, um…I just had to pin it down eventually, and that was a very strange beast.
Due to this difficulty, there are multiple masters of the track in existence, including a special “Meteorological Mix” (also embedded above!) for the 12” single, which rolls out over the course of 7+ minutes. Transparently, I had never heard this mix before writing this article, but it’s now my favorite version of the song. Taking an already expansive track and extending it to explore the fullness of its being, the “Meteorological Mix” serves as a meditation on creative and spiritual awakening, drumming us straight off to synth-y heaven.
In both versions of the track I listened to, the song culminates in a chorus of Kates at the end, as they rapturously aver:
We’re looking at the [big sky]—
Rolling over like a great big cloud
Walking out in the big sky.
I don’t know about you, but this “fool on the hill” is ready to walk out there with them.
Ari - aka A.A. Brenner (they / he) is a playwright, screenwriter, dramaturg, and New Yorker. Some pretty cool places have presented or commissioned their plays (La Jolla Playhouse, Lincoln Center, Breaking the Binary Theatre Company, and more). They’ve been awarded some pretty cool residencies (SPACE on Ryder Farm, Catwalk Art Institute) and have been a finalist for some pretty cool awards at some pretty cool organizations (the Leah Ryan Fund, the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, The Lark, and Platform Presents, to name a few). They’re pleased to see you here, on the internet, reading their prose. Enjoy!*
*or not! That’s up to you
Thank you! That’s a wrap on our first Kate Bush Week! Hopefully, we helped create some fans or just reminded you how great she is!
If you want to recommend an artist to write about ….DO IT!
We’ll do this again! C’mon! She’s got hits!
I got different moisturizers for morning, night, face and body!
It took me waaaaaayyyy too long to get that Poetry is the most efficient way to communicate our deepest thoughts and feelings.