FEATURE:
Will You Never Be Mine?
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Wow
Kate Bush and the Divide Between the U.K. and U.S. in Terms of Perception and Reputation
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A subject I have covered a few times before…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promo photo taken during a visit to Holland in spring 1978
is how Kate Bush is received in America compared to the rest of the world. A new podcast from National Review in America is, in their own words, a chance for U.S. audiences to reappraise Kate Bush. How much is known about her there in 2022? Whilst she has a lot of American fans, do artists there follow Bush and carry her D.N.A. like they do here? I do feel that, in terms of population size, far fewer Americans know about Bush’s work. She is almost a national treasure and institute here in Britain. Before exploring this point more, here is some detail about a podcast episode that was released earlier in the month:
“Introducing the Band:
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by Andrew Prokop. Andrew is Senior Politics Correspondent for Vox, and you can find his work here. Follow him on Twitter at @awprokop.
Andrew’s Music Pick: Kate Bush
Who? Unless you’re an art-rocker, Englishman, or Lisa Simpsonesque girl-poet-dreamer, the name “Kate Bush” quite likely means nothing to you. Bush is something close to a beloved institution in the United Kingdom, where she has grown up in public to become the nation’s officially designated Eccentric Bookish Aunt, but in the United States she is almost a pure cipher outside of music fanatics, a weird lady with a flute-like voice who occasionally shows up on ’80s-era Peter Gabriel singles.
Well get ready for a massive course-correction then, because this is an episode of Political Beats that has been brewing since the day the show began. And it doesn’t take a psychic to figure out which of your hosts has been quietly lying in wait, ready to explain the deeply committed art-rock genius of Kate Bush to you for four years now. Bush began her career as a downright creepily preternatural child prodigy (she was writing at age ten, recording by age 13, professionally recording at age 15, and released her debut LP at age 18), swiftly gathered up complete creative control into her hands, and went to work from 1980 onwards shaping a career that stands for so many things, but perhaps most of all for the miraculous idea that gallery/exhibition-level art and “pop music” can still coexist within the same skin without shedding representation altogether. Instrumentally, this is piano-based music, but the real instrument here is the Fairlight CMI, a synthesizer program set that allowed her to retreat into near-complete isolation and play every single note of any instrument herself; Bush, more than nearly any other rock or pop artist with mainstream success during the 1980s, is the sound of Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own made good.
Ah, but it’s not just about art! It’s about love and beauty! Bush balanced all of her arty instincts with an achingly pure lyrical vision that magpied from every influence imaginable to take form in her own unique style: a literary fascination with artifice — with the self-construction that knowledge and imposture makes possible — combined with an elementally deeply fascination with men and the inscrutable mysteries of masculine anxieties, ambitions, and inchoate needs.
So here we go! It’s coming for us through the trees! Take your shoes off, throw them in the lake, click play, and before you’re 20 minutes in, hopefully you’ll be two steps on the water as well”.
I have written about America’s view of Kate Bush. I drew articles where it was noted that, as Tori Amos arrived in the 1990s and sounded a lot like Bush, the originator was not taken to heart. In 1978, when Wuthering Heights was released, it did nothing in America. There have only been a few albums and singles that have made any impact there. Hounds of Love (1985) as a commercial success, as was The Red Shoes (1993) and Aerial (2005). I don’t think America struggles to embrace anything quintessentially English or eccentric. They have adopted a lot of experimental music and Art-Rock that owes a debt to Kate Bush. Modern U.S. artists like St. Vincent definitely can be compared with Bush. Not only did I want to mention that recent podcast episode – as not many Kate Bush podcast episodes are out there -, but it does seem that there is this vacuum in the U.S. Although Bush did visit America at times through her career, she did not tour there or try to crack the country. I look on social media, and there is a lot of love from America. One of the biggest mysteries is why there is not more knowledge of Bush’s music across the American media and radio stations. The fact that National Review mention how Bush is seen as a bit of an oddity of side-act makes me think what can be done to correct that.
Podcasts are a positive and productive way to make sure that listeners know more about an artist who, in the U.K., is a massive success and is considered to be one of our best artists ever. I don’t think it is the case that, as Bush was born in the U.K., we understand her better than anyone else. America has always been a fan of British music, but there is something about Kate Bush that means she has taken longer to embed. If her ten studio albums were not huge chart successes or celebrated a tonne upon release, now is the time to think twice! Although one can hear some brand-new artists in America who are inspired by Kate Bush, there are far fewer than in the U.K. I think. I do wonder whether record shops stock her albums; whether stations play a lot of her music. One cannot imagine many deep cuts cropping up on American radio! Whilst I cannot really understand why there is not as great an understanding of Kate Bush in America as there should be, I feel the solution going forward is more exposure and re-investigation. We are long-overdue a documentary and I think, if produced by Netflix or Apple+, it would reach a lot of new fans and ears in America. There is a hangover from past years where people perceive Bush as odd; her music being strange and inaccessible. We are, perhaps, more cultured and less judgemental here. The truth is that Bush’s music is so varied, it is impossible to label it or define so easily. Nearly forty-five years since Kate Bush’s debut album came out, the U.S. does seem to be lagging behind a lot of the rest of the world when it comes to appreciation and mass digestion of all of her albums. I hope that, with people out there trying to change attitudes, we see the music and genius of Kate Bush earning…
A bigger profile in America.