FEATURE:
Kate Bush and the Sexism She Faced:
ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Priscila Vergara
Were People Intimidated By Her Talent and Originality?
__________
I think some of the attitude…
IN THIS PHOTO: Björk/PHOTO CREDIT: Vidar Logi
persisted will into her later albums but, certainly, Kate Bush faced sexism and dismissal early in her career. This is something that (sadly) a lot of women face in music. In 1978, when she released Wuthering Heights and her debut album, The Kick Inside, there was a lot of awe and wonder and fascination. Stupendously strange, new, original, and astonishing, this teenager was releasing music that was incomparable to anything else! Whereas a male artist would have gained a lot of kudos from critics at a time when genres like Punk offered something angrier and simpler, producing this mesmeric, otherworldly, and unusual music would have been seen as a great balance and remedy to a lot of the more aggressive and less nuanced music around at the time. As it was, many slated and parodied Bush because she was a young woman. As I have discussed in previous features, Bush had a sense of humour when it came to people lampooning her. She was very strong-willed and able to go on the defensive concerning interviewers and the media. When she released albums like Aerial (2005) – when she was in her forties – and 50 Words for Snow (2011) – when she was in her fifties -, there were many who pigeonholed her or felt she was past her sell-by date. I read quite a bit (from mostly male journalists) who were very reductive and insulting towards Bush and her relevance now. Maybe harking back to glory days such as in 1985, when she released Hounds of Love, this idea of a genius artist being past it or lacking any importance was insulting to her legacy and talent!
I mention this subject, because Björk has mentioned Kate Bush in her new podcast series, Sonic Symbolism. Here is an artist who has always been a big fan of hers. Björk has named The Dreaming (1982) as one of her favourite albums. You can definitely trace a line between the artists. In a future feature run, I may compare Bush with artists who have followed her and been inspired by her eclectic catalogue. As Far Out Magazine recently reported, Björk discussed Kate Bush and the reason why many were sexist towards her in an interview with The Guardian:
“If you wish to point to two women who have done more for the progression of music in the last 40 years, you probably can’t do any better than Kate Bush and Björk. Although both have unique qualities that make them distinct, both are critically acclaimed, commercially successful boundary pushers who have led the charge in progressive pop music for decades.
On one side is Bush, the classically trained former dance student turned intellectual pop star. Bush is the first woman to ever score a solo number one hit in the UK with a song she wrote and sang herself. This year, Bush nabbed another historic first: the longest gap between number ones, with ‘Wuthering Heights’ hitting the top of the charts in 1978 and ‘Running Up That Hill’ doing the same in 2022, a solid 44 years between number one singles.
On the other side is Björk, the incredibly futuristic genre-blender who has taken on everything from traditional Icelandic rhythms to grime beats to orchestral arrangements, sometimes within the same song.
In an interview with The Guardian, Björk opened up about how Bush’s reception was inherently misogynistic. “It was kind of sexist. People thought that Kate Bush was insane. People were embarrassed about admitting that they actually liked her and I think that is something, actually, one good thing about feminism nowadays is that she is not a threat at all”.
Björk doubled down on her fandom of Bush in an interview around the time of her album Debut. She called Bush “one of my heroes” and referred to her as “one of the biggest pioneering producers. Everybody just says, ‘Oh, she’s just a singer. She’s just a chick’. But they forget all the other work she’s done, that woman. She’s very, very, very gorgeous”.
I have been thinking about Kate Bush and her earliest days in music. The fact that she has survived and managed to build this incredible reputation and amount of respect is testament to her strength, incredible abilities and unmatched talent and evolution. I wonder whether part of the reason why Bush did progress in terms of her sound so quickly was because of a certain backlash and mockery from the media. Whilst not all entirely sexist, you get this feeling that here was this eccentric young woman making something weird to provoke people. I think Björk is half-right when she theorised how a lot of the sexism might have been making an actual respect and admiration for her work. Like male journalists and others would rather attack and belittle because they’d be embarrassed admitting they liked Kate Bush! I think one big reason why Bush faced a lot of sexism in the earliest years and had to face it for a very long time after, is because her talent and sound was so unlike anything else. Rather than conceding they didn’t understand it or they couldn’t adapt, there was this rather sexist and belittling attitude. I have been reminded of an article from The Guardian from 2014 (when she announced and performed her Before the Dawn residency dates) as to why Kate Bush matters:
“Going to see Kate Bush live isn’t remotely like that. In a world built on fake exits and stage-managed yearning, she left everybody genuinely wanting more. She has been a hermit, as far as performing is concerned, for 35 years; she’s a one-off, a prodigy, a creative heatball, an experiment of the species – dazzlingly successful but unreplicable. Her lyrical romanticism is questing and ambivalent, rather than needy and predictable. Her voice is wild, her melodies only make sense when you submit to them. Her physical world is perhaps the greatest of her idiosyncrasies, abandon and urgency at its poles, creating the magnetism that one would once have called “sexy”, but for the fact that the word now means “identikit gyrating in hotpants”. She is what music sounds like when it is the authentic creation of its author, and there are no strings being pulled by marketing guys or Svengalis.
Taking her as a creative ideal, I realise I’ve been having the wrong conversation about female pop stars. I spend a lot of time wondering about female creativity as it’s represented in music. What does it actually mean when Miley Cyrus leaps around faux-masturbating all the time? Could that ever be called a genuine expression of her sexuality? When Lady Gaga makes a video with R Kelly that looks like a slickly produced advertisement for date-rape drugs, is that collusion with the patriarchy or a subversion of it? Can Beyoncé, through sheer force of will, emancipate herself from the craven re-domestication agenda of her lyric: “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it”?
The pattern with mainstream music is that a young woman is fashioned into an image of sexual desire concocted by some sleazy 50-year-old guy (or, more likely, a focus group full of them). She is then rounded on by feminists from the left and social conservatives from the right for being naked or (this is worse) naked and too thin.
She says, “What are you talking about? I’m doing what I want. Isn’t that what feminism is supposed to be all about?” And just as you’re about to explain – to Geri Halliwell, or whomever are her successors – that what she’s doing has nothing to do with her own imagination, and she’s just a cipher for someone else’s, it dawns on you how ridiculous it is to tell a woman what you think her self-expression should look like, on the basis that she shouldn’t be letting other people tell her what her self-expression should look like. If you say that Britney Spears was just the unwitting victim of the quasi-pederasty of her early oeuvre, then you’re infantilising her as much as the first guy who dressed her in school uniform and used her virginity as a calling card. Absurd! It’s all so circular and self-defeating”.
A remarkable artist who has gained fresh popularity and attention in 2022, I think back to 1978 and the years after when many were so sexist and disrespectful of Bush. It ranged from sort of blokey mocking to casual sexism in reviews and features. She had to endure that for a long time (and still does), but the fact that she has influenced legions of artists and is being name-checked by the likes of Björk proves how influential and important she is. Even though Bush had to endure sexism and misogyny for a long time, I feel attitudes started to change when she became more successful and released albums such as Hounds of Love. It was about time that such an innovator and wonderful artist/producer got..
THE respect she deserves.