The Kick Inside

Kate Bush

album cover

The Debut of a Pop Iconoclast

Under normal circumstances, any song called "Wuthering Heights" that begins with the line "Out on the wiley, windy moors, we'd roll and fall in green," would be something to avoid, another pretentious grab at literature from yet another pop lyricist desperate for material. But these are not normal circumstances. The singer and songwriter Kate Bush was eighteen when she recorded this. A piano prodigy from Bexleyheath, England, with a taste for cinematic art-rock and a penchant for bracing (if slightly eccentric) imagery, she was clearly precocious. Few eighteen-year-olds would dare transpose the Gothic manners of Emily Bronte's novel onto a song of steamy yearning.

By sixteen, Bush had developed a reputation for her silvery voice, four-octave-range, and original songs that invoked paranormal phenomena. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour became an advocate; he financed the demo tape that got her signed and, along with Pink Floyd producer Andrew Powell, spent two years developing the young artist. "Wuthering Heights" was the first fruit of this collaboration: Released in early 1978, it was a massive U.K. hit (actually boosting sales of the Bronte book), and the album established Bush internationally—no small feat considering that its off-kilter music stood apart from everything on the charts at the time. Although Bush released more commercial music subsequently, the weeping-willow melodies and majestic refrains of The Kick Inside remain her boldest statement, a tour of a mystic netherworld of Heathcliffs and healers led by a girl who's just beginning to puzzle out the meaning of it all.

Genre: Pop
Released: 1978, EMI
Key Tracks: "The Saxophone Song," "Moving," "Them Heavy People"
Catalog Choice: Hounds of Love
Next Stop: Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes
After That: Cocteau Twins: Treasure
Book Pages: 133–134

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#1 from Collin Kelley, Atlanta, GA - 10/13/2008 3:49

Kate Bush has influenced nearly every woman recording pop and rock since the release of this album in 1978. The emotional depth of her lyrics and the preciseness of her music - written while she was a teenager - have never been equaled. Beyond the hit single “Wuthering Heights,” there’s a curiosity, knowingness and “old soul” at work on songs like “The Man With the Child In His Eyes,” “Moving” and “Them Heavy People.” Her strength as a singer, songwriter and producer have only continued to grow. After a 12 year gap, Bush returned in 2005 with “Aerial,” which proved that the precocious teenager was nowhere near a one-off. She is a musician who has refused to play the game set out by a music industry to create a body of work second to none. She is an icon.

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About 1,000 Recordings

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