FEATURE:
Warm in the Heart, Cold to the Touch
Misty from Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow
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BECAUSE Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 50 Words for Snow (2011)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from his book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
is nine today (21st November), I wanted to do my last song-specific feature regarding the album – through the months, I might pop back into the album for some inspiration. It does not seem that long ago that she released the album but, in 2011, we got a sublime tenth studio album from Bush. One would understand if Bush’s work lost some of its appeal and brilliance through the years but, on 50 Words for Snow, she was as beguiling and sensational as ever! I think her albums post-The Red Shoes (1993) are as accomplished and stunning as any she ever produced. The albums offer more space and atmosphere; Bush less dependant on shorter tracks and easy singles. Instead, there is more attention on allowing songs to expand and extend to elicit something beautiful as they unfurl. After Aerial’s sense of the natural world revealing itself through the course of a day – on the double album’s second disc, A Sky of Honey -, and Director’s Cut’s transformation of older tracks, Bush brought out an album that very much had the cold and beauty of winter at its heart. I have talked about various songs from 50 Words for Snow and how she brought in guest vocalists like Elton John, Stephen Fry, and Andy Fairweather-Low. I like how there are relatively few musicians on 50 Words for Snow, and how that creates necessary sparsity and space for these songs to emote.
At the core, I think, is Bush and her piano; almost like her revisiting albums like The Kick Inside, and Lionheart (both 1978) in that sense. With seven tracks on the album, none of them shorter than six minutes, I feel one can immerse themselves in these wonderful tales. Of course, snow is a central theme, and one of 50 Words for Snow’s finest tracks comes in the form of Misty. At 13:32, Misty is the longest song on the album, and, in fact, the longest song Bush has ever released on a studio album. She would not have really been able to do this earlier in her career I feel, as there was more desire for her to record shorter songs. Albums such as The Dreaming (1982), and Hounds of Love (1985) contained plenty of experimentation and drama, but 50 Words for Snow is an album where Bush created these magnificent mini-symphonies. Misty never feels too long or plods. With Bush on piano and vocal, Danny McIntosh on guitar, Danny Thompson on double bass, and Steve Gadd on percussion, there is this tight and small crew that bring this incredible song to life! On paper, Misty might sound like a mix of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman and Madonna’s Erotica – the single from the album of the same name. Misty is a love song concerning a woman and a snowman, and rather than it being about Bush, it is about a general protagonist.
In this article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, we get a couple of interview snippets where Bush talks about Misty:
“Well, I think in that particular song obviously there is a sexual encounter going on… (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)
It's a silly idea. But I hope that what has happened is that there's almost a sense of tenderness. I think it's quite a dark song. And so I hope that I've made it work. But in a lot of ways it shouldn't because... It's ridiculous, isn't it, the idea of the snowman visiting this woman and climbing into bed with her.
But I took him as a purely symbolic snowman, it was about...
No John, he's REAL (laughs). (BBC4 Radio, Front Row, 2011)”.
There is definite sensuality and steaminess to be found in the song but, rather than it being this intensely passionate song about an unusual and unconventional muse, I think it is more Bush having this child-like fascination with a snowman; maybe reacting to how her son, Bertie, would built snowmen as she watched from the window. 50 Words for Snow has this very tangible sense of snow and the way it can transform a scene and people. I consider Misty to be an unofficial (if unusual) Christmas single, whereby we get images that are very much traditional and relatable.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2011/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from his book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
The opening verse is very much about the snow falling and the construction beginning: “Roll his body/Give him eyes/Make him smile for me/Give him life”. Rather than it being like The Snowman in terms of the narrative, there are twists and turns early on. The way the protagonist is injured (“My hand is bleeding, I run back inside”) and her window flies open would suggest something darker and gothic. In fact, after the snowman is built and the heroine retreats to her bedroom, the outside comes inside: “My bedroom fills with falling snow,/Should be a dream but I'm not sleepy/I see his snowy white face but I'm not afraid/He lies down beside me”. I really love how delicate and tender Bush’s piano is and, soon, we get Steve Gadd providing this gentle drumming that elicits the pitter-patter of snow, the beauty of the night and all the magic we associate with winter and Christmas – even though it is not a Christmas-set song, one can feel something Christmas-like in the air! This being Kate Bush, one is arrested by the lyrics and her storytelling. Not to bring it back to The Snowman, but there is a similar sense of loss and transient joy. Whether the protagonist was dreaming and imagining the snowman coming through her window, or whether it is a supernatural case of a snowman actually materialising, I am not too sure.
PHOTO CREDIT: @mirakemppainen/Unsplash
The snowman lies beside her and feels so cold and, soon, this fully-formed and glistening being starts to dissolve and disappear: “His crooked mouth is full of dead leaves/Full of dead leaves, bits of twisted branches and frozen garden/crushed and stolen grasses from slumbering lawn/He is dissolving, dissolving before me and dawn will come soon”. I adore the composition and mood Bush and her musician summon through Misty. There is a brilliant combination of moodiness and deeper notes, together with Bush’s elongated and held vocals which provoke warmer, lighter images. There is a mixture of the child-like and adult in the song. At its heart is this woman who is awe-struck by the fascination of snow and creating this snowman, but there is also a sensualness and something more explicit: “Melting, melting, in my hand/Sunday morning/I can't find him/The sheets are soaking”. There is that desperation and plea as the snowman has gone – “Oh please can you help me?/He must be somewhere/Open window closing/Oh but wait, it's still snowing” -, but hope that he might be alive somewhere! Not many songwriters explore snow and its possibilities, but 50 Words for Snow is an album where this beautiful and sometimes oppressive weather is examined spectacularly through the album (apart from the closing track, Among Angels). Many critics highlighted Misty when reviewing 50 Words for Snow, and I think many were intrigued.
AllMusic were hooked and impressed: "Misty," the set's longest -- and strangest -- cut, is about a woman's very physical amorous tryst with, bizarrely, a snowman. Despite its unlikely premise, the grain of longing expressed in Bush's voice -- with bassist Danny Thompson underscoring it -- is convincing. Her jazz piano touches on Vince Guaraldi in its vamp. The subject is so possessed by the object of her desire, the morning's soaked but empty sheets propel her to a window ledge to seek her melted lover in the winter landscape”. The Guardian had this to say: “(“It devotes nearly 14 impossibly beautiful minutes to Misty, a song on which Bush imagines first building a snowman and then, well, humping him, with predictably unhappy consequences: "He is dissolving before me," she sings sadly, not the first lady in history to complain about an evening of passion coming to a premature conclusion”). Tthat blend of beauty and strangeness definitely makes the song a standout. Although Misty was not officially released as a single, there is a video for it and one does get this visual and physical sense of an odd rendezvous that actually packs an emotional punch! Even though 50 Words for Snow is less personal and autobiographical than Aerial, I think a lot of Bush’s memories go into the album. She was asked by The Quietus about where the centrepiece of snow originated from: “Did the snow theme come from an epiphany or a particular grain or idea? Was there one particular day when you happened to be in the snow…
KB: No. I don’t think there was much snow going on through the writing of this… it was more to do with my memories of snow I suppose and the exploration of the images that come with it”. She was also asked about the enticing Misty:
“Yeah, ‘Misty’, which has the reference to the girl's affair with a snowman, the wet sheets, the idea of him melting in her hands and on her bed. KB: Yeah. [massive pause] I’m sorry John, did you ask me a question? What was the question? I asked if there was a sexual undercurrent to this record, which is ostensibly quite childlike and innocent? KB: To that song, yeah. Yeah, because of the story that’s being told. But with the other tracks… I don’t know…”.
The cover for 50 Words for Snow sees a woman kissing a snowman and, whilst it might not be the best kiss you could imagine – quite cold and all sort of bits of twigs and ground in there! -, I think there is this wonderful romance and bond; a woman connecting with the beauty of snow and what it brings. As we get near to Christmas, I not only wanted to mark the anniversary of 50 Words for Snow, but to highlight one of its best songs. Bush herself has said how 50 Words for Snow is not a Christmas record, but I think Misty does elicit visions of that time. As I have compared the song to The Snowman, I always consider Misty to be a sort of Christmas single that never was – Bush did record Home for Christmas, which originally appeared in The Comic Strip Presents film, Wild Turkey,, on 24th December, 1992. I shall leave it there, but I wanted to highlight a wonderful and evocative song from 50 Words for Snow that I would urge people to listen to. It is a stirring, tender, peculiar and beautiful track that…
PHOTO CREDIT: @aaronburden/Unsplash
WILL touch the heart.