FEATURE: Ranking Tracks from Kate Bush’s Albums… Hounds of Love

FEATURE:

Ranking Tracks from Kate Bush’s Albums…

Hounds of Love

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IN this part…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

of this seven/eight-edition series comes on to 1985’s Hounds of Love. Regarded as Kate Bush’s finest album, I am ranking the tracks from it. There is nothing even slightly weak on the album but, as some are better than others, I am deciding which are the very best. Everyone has their opinions as to which songs on Hounds of Love are superior. I would encourage people to buy the album on vinyl. Before getting to the tracks, here is some information from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia:

“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released on her fifth studio album Hounds Of Love. Also released as the third single from the album on 24 February 1986. The song is about being afraid to fall in love; in the song this feeling is compared to being chased by a pack of hounds. The intro features a quote from a line spoken in the film Night Of The Demon by Maurice Denham.

['Hounds Of Love'] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn't as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being - perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)

The ideas for 'Hounds Of Love', the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case the hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it's very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you've got to run away from it or you won't survive. (Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985)

When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought 'Hounds Of Love' and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna... when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of... being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)”.

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12. Mother Stands for Comfort

“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released on the album Hounds Of Love in 1985. The track seems to be the most skeletal of the album. A flat drum pattern, just kick and snare, provides the metronomic basis upon which the whole percussion pattern, piano chords and a sinuous upright bass melody are built. Most other sounds are most probably provided by the Fairlight

Well, the personality that sings this track is very unfeeling in a way. And the cold qualities of synths and machines were appropriate here. There are many different kinds of love and the track's really talking about the love of a mother, and in this case she's the mother of a murderer, in that she's basically prepared to protect her son against anything. 'Cause in a way it's also suggesting that the son is using the mother, as much as the mother is protecting him. It's a bit of a strange matter, isn't it really? [laughs] (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums Interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

11. The Morning Fog

“There is only one studio version of this song.

A live version appears on the album Before The Dawn.

Well, that's really meant to be the rescue of the whole situation, where now suddenly out of all this darkness and weight comes light. You know, the weightiness is gone and here's the morning, and it's meant to feel very positive and bright and uplifting from the rest of dense, darkness of the previous track. And although it doesn't say so, in my mind this was the song where they were rescued, where they get pulled out of the water. And it's very much a song of seeing perspective, of really, you know, of being so grateful for everything that you have, that you're never grateful of in ordinary life because you just abuse it totally. And it was also meant to be one of those kind of "thank you and goodnight" songs. You know, the little finale where everyone does a little dance and then the bow and then they leave the stage. [laughs] (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

10. Under Ice

“Well at this point, although they didn't want to go to sleep, of course they do. [Laughs] And this is the dream, and it's really meant to be quite nightmarish. And this was all kinda coming together by itself, I didn't have much to do with this, I just sat down and wrote this little tune on the Fairlight with the cello sound. And it sounded very operatic and I thought "well, great" because it, you know, it conjured up the image of ice and was really simple to record. I mean we did the whole thing in a day, I guess. (...) Again it's very lonely, it's terribly lonely, they're all alone on like this frozen lake. And at the end of it, it's the idea of seeing themselves under the ice in the river, so I mean we're talking real nightmare stuff here. And at this point, when they say, you know, "my god, it's me," you know, "it's me under the ice. Ahhhh" [laughs] (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

9. Jig of Life

“In 2014, Kate performed 'Jig Of Life' live during all the shows of Before The Dawn. During the performance, a video of John Carder Bush appears on a television screen, reciting the poem at the end of the track.

At this point in the story, it's the future self of this person coming to visit them to give them a bit of help here. I mean, it's about time they have a bit of help. So it's their future self saying, "look, don't give up, you've got to stay alive, 'cause if you don't stay alive, that means I don't." You know, "and I'm alive, I've had kids [laughs]. I've been through years and years of life, so you have to survive, you mustn't give up."

This was written in Ireland. At one point I did quite a lot of writing, you know, I mean lyrically, particularly. And again it was a tremendous sort of elemental dose I was getting, you know, all this beautiful countryside. Spending a lot of time outside and walking, so it had this tremendous sort of stimulus from the outside. And this was one of the tracks that the Irish musicians that we worked with was featured on.

There was a tune that my brother Paddy found which... he said "you've got to hear this, you'll love it." And he was right [laughs], he played it to me and I just thought, you know, "this would be fantastic somehow to incorporate here."

Was just sort of, pull this person up out of despair. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

8. Hello Earth

“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released on her fifth studio album Hounds Of Love. Sixth track of The Ninth Wave suite. The choral section, performed by the Richard Hickox Singers, is taken from a Georgian folk song called 'Zinzkaro' ('By The Spring'), which Kate heard performed by the Vocal Ensemble Gordela on the soundtrack of Werner Herzog's 1979 film Nosferatu The Vampyre. The lyric translates as:

'I was passing by the spring.

There I met a beautiful woman with a jug on her shoulder.

I spoke a word to her and she left, offended.

I was passing by the spring.'

The song was used in an episode of the American TV series Miami Vice.

'Hello Earth' was a very difficult track to write, as well, because it was... in some ways it was too big for me. [Laughs] And I ended up with this song that had two huge great holes in the choruses, where the drums stopped, and everything stopped, and people would say to me, "what's going to happen in these choruses," and I hadn't got a clue.

We had the whole song, it was all there, but these huge, great holes in the choruses. And I knew I wanted to put something in there, and I'd had this idea to put a vocal piece in there, that was like this traditional tune I'd heard used in the film Nosferatu. And really everything I came up with, it with was rubbish really compared to what this piece was saying. So we did some research to find out if it was possible to use it. And it was, so that's what we did, we re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words that sounded like what I could hear was happening on the original. And suddenly there was these beautiful voices in these chorus that had just been like two black holes.

In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above. You know, that image of if you were lying in water at night and you were looking up at the sky all the time, I wonder if you wouldn't get the sense of as the stars were reflected in the water, you know, a sense of like, you could be looking up at water that's reflecting the stars from the sky that you're in. And the idea of them looking down at the earth and seeing these storms forming over America and moving around the globe, and they have this like huge fantasticly overseeing view of everything, everything is in total perspective. And way, way down there somewhere there's this little dot in the ocean that is them. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

7. Watching You Without Me

“Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they're kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there's no way that you can actually communicate, because they can't see you, they can't you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song. And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] "you can't hear me". And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn't actually hear what the backing vocals were saying. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

6. And Dream of Sheep

“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released on her fifth studio album Hounds Of Love. First track of The Ninth Wave suite. Kate travelled to Dublin in the spring of 1984 for extended studio sessions for 'And Dream Of Sheep' and 'Jig Of Life'. Donal Lunny recalled later that Kate asked him to play the single whistle note at the end of the track over and over again for three hours, in search of just the right 'bend' in the note.

[The Ninth Wave] is about someone who is in the water alone for the night. 'And Dream Of Sheep' is about them fighting sleep. They're very tired and they've been in the water waiting for someone to come and get them, and it's starting to get dark and it doesn't look like anyone's coming and they want to go to sleep. They know that if they go to sleep in the water they could turn over and drown, so they're trying to keep awake; but they can't help it, they eventually fall asleep - which takes us into the second song. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)

An engineer we were working with picked out the line in 'And Dream Of Sheep' that says 'Come here with me now'. I asked him why he liked it so much. He said, 'I don't know, I just love it. It's so moving and comforting.' I don't think he even knew what was being said exactly, but the song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they're alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time it's dangerous to go to sleep in water, you could drown. When I was little, and I'd had a bad dream, I'd go into my parents' bedroom round to my mother's side of the bed. She'd be asleep, and I wouldn't want to wake her, so I'd stand there and wait for her to sense my presence and wake up. She always did, within minutes; and sometimes I'd frighten her - standing there still, in the darkness in my nightdress. I'd say, 'I've had a bad dream,' and she'd lift bedclothes and say something like 'Come here with me now.' It's my mother saying this line in the track, and I briefed her on the ideas behind it before she said it. And I think it's the motherly comfort that this engineer picked up on. In fact, he said this was his favourite part of the album. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 21, 1987)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

5. Cloudbusting

“This was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It's about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child's point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a 'cloudbuster'; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy - as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then - and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn't allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It's a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo - how special it was - and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there's nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it's very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child's eyes, but told by a sad adult. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)

'Cloudbusting' is a track that was very much inspired by a book called A Book Of Dreams. This book is written through a child's eyes, looking at his father and how much his father means to him in his world - he's everything. his father has a machine that can make it rain, amongst many other things, and there's a wonderful sense of magic as he and his father make it rain together on this machine. The book is full of imagery of an innocent child and yet it's being written by a sad adult, which gives it a strange kind of personal intimacy and magic that is quite extraordinary. The song is really about how much that father meant to the son and how much he misses him now he's gone. (Conversation Disc Series, ABCD 012, 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

4. Hounds of Love

“The ideas for 'Hounds Of Love', the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it's very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you've got to run away from it or you won't survive. (Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985)

In the song 'Hounds Of Love', what do you mean by the line 'I'll be two steps on the water', other than a way of throwing off the scent of hounds, or whatever, by running through water. But why 'two' steps?

Because two steps is a progression. One step could possibly mean you go forward and then you come back again. I think "two steps" suggests that you intend to go forward.

But why not "three steps"?

It could have been three steps - it could have been ten, but "two steps" sounds better, I thought, when I wrote the song. Okay. (Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

3. Waking the Witch

“These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don't drown. My mother's in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench - the guy that mixed the album with us - is in there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says "Wake up child, pay attention!". (...) I couldn't get a helicopter anywhere and in the end I asked permission to use the helicopter from The Wall from The Floyd, it was the best helicopter I'd heard for years for years [laughs].

I think it's very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women's power. In a way it's very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she's committed no crime, and they're trying to push her under the water to see if she'll sink or float. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

2. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)

“Song written by Kate Bush. The song was reportedly written in one evening in the summer of 1983. It was the first song recorded for the subsequent fifth studio album Hounds Of Love. The electronic drums, programmed by Del Palmer, and the Fairlight part were present from the first recording of the song. The lyrics speak of Bush's impossible wish to become her lover, and he her, so that they could know what the other felt. Kate played the first versions of the songs to Paul Hardiman on 6 October 1983. He commented later: "The first time I heard 'Running Up That Hill' it wasn't a demo, it was a working start. We carried on working on Kate and Del's original. Del had programmed the Linn drum part, the basis of which we kept. I know we spent time working on the Fairlight melody/hook but the idea was there plus guide vocals."

The track was worked on between 4 November and 6 December, with Stuart Elliott adding drums, but closely following the programmed pattern. Alan Murphy added guitar parts whereas Paddy Bush, always providing the most ingenious instruments, played the rather better known balalaika on this track.

The working title of 'Running Up That Hill' was 'A Deal With God'. Representatives at EMI were hesitant to release the single as 'A Deal With God' due its use of the word 'God', which might lead to a negative reception. Bush relented and changed the title for the single.

It is very much about the power of love, and the strength that is created between two people when they're very much in love, but the strength can also be threatening, violent, dangerous as well as gentle, soothing, loving. And it's saying that if these two people could swap places - if the man could become the woman and the woman the man, that perhaps they could understand the feelings of that other person in a truer way, understanding them from that gender's point of view, and that perhaps there are very subtle differences between the sexes that can cause problems in a relationship, especially when people really do care about each other. (The Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985)

'Running Up That Hill' was one of the first songs that I wrote for the album. It was very nice for me that it was the first single released, I'd always hoped that would be the way. It's very much about a relationship between a man and a woman who are deeply in love and they're so concerned that things could go wrong - they have great insecurity, great fear of the relationship itself. It's really saying if there's a possibility of being able to swap places with each other that they'd understand how the other one felt, that when they were saying things that weren't meant to hurt, that they weren't meant sincerely, that they were just misunderstood. In some ways, I suppose the basic difference between men and women, where if we could swap places in a relationship, we'd understand each other better, but this, of course, is all theoretical anyway. (Open Interview, 1985) – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia

1. The Big Sky

“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released on her fifth album Hounds Of Love in 1985, it was released as the fourth and final single from the album on 28 April 1986. The song is about remembering some of the simple pleasures enjoyed as children that most no longer find the time for, such as spending the afternoon looking at the sky, watching the clouds take on shapes.

The music video was directed by Bush herself. It was filmed on 19 March 1986 at Elstree Film Studios in the presence of a studio audience of about hundred fans. The Homeground fanzine was asked to get this audience together, and they did within two weeks. Two coaches took everyone from Manchester Square to Elstree studios early in the morning, after which the Homeground staff, who were cast as some of the aviators, were filmed, and finally the whole audience was admitted for the 'crowd scenes'. The scenes were repeated until Kate had them as she wanted.

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. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)

'The Big Sky' was a song that changed a lot between the first version of it on the demo and the end product on the master tapes. As I mentioned in the earlier magazine, the demos are the masters, in that we now work straight in the 24-track studio when I'm writing the songs; but the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopaedia