FEATURE:
The Final Note
Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five
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BECAUSE Kate Bush’s…
debut album, The Kick Inside, turns forty-five on 17th February, I haven’t got much more time to discuss it before the anniversary. The final anniversary feature about The Kick Inside concerns its title track. I have written about it several times before, but I am compelled to come back. There are certain tracks on Bush’s 1978 debut album that could not be anywhere else. Moving really does happen to open The Kick Inside, as it begins with whale song, and the lyrics are about a young woman coming out of herself and blossoming in confidence. It is the perfect way to open a debut album. Also, Wuthering Heights ends the first side. Again, it is perfect, as it keeps the listener hooked and provides this mighty half-way point. Another track that could not be anywhere else is The Kick Inside. One of her most remarkable moments, it is typically unconventional! One reason why Bush’s debut album is so respected and loved is because she was challenging and hugely original right from the start. When it came to the common subject of love, she was still breaking away from the predictable and describing lust and desire in such interesting and different ways. The Kick Inside’s title track is one of the most fascinating entries in Bush’s catalogue. It is a song that perfectly ends The Kick Inside.
Inspired by so many different sources, the songs that form The Kick Inside are so varied. Almost a tapestry in terms of the different threads the teenage Bush weaves, the sublime and sad title track is the perfect swansong. I will come to the very final note and embers of the title track and album. That is a major reason why I love the album so much. You listen to it and are affected and moved. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia has combined a couple of interview snippets where Bush discussed The Kick Inside. It is a fascinating background and story:
“The song The Kick Inside, the title track, was inspired by a traditional folk song and it was an area that I wanted to explore because it's one that is really untouched and that is one of incest. There are so many songs about love, but they are always on such an obvious level. This song is about a brother and a sister who are in love, and the sister becomes pregnant by her brother. And because it is so taboo and unheard of, she kills herself in order to preserve her brother's name in the family. The actual song is in fact the suicide note. The sister is saying 'I'm doing it for you' and 'Don't worry, I'll come back to you someday.' (Self Portrait, 1978)”.
Few artists of that generation were writing anything like The Kick Inside! In fact, it is less likely artists now would tackle anything such as incest or a song influenced by Lucy Wan. The ballad’s heroine can alternately be called Lizie, so Lizie Wan is a title many might know it by. This murder ballad/Child Ballad 51 (The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century) did get referenced more directly in the second verse of an early demo where Bush sang “You and me on the bobbing knee/Welling eyes from identifying with Lizie Wan's story”. The lines that appear on the album version are “You and me on the bobbing knee/Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!/I will come home again, but not until/The sun and the moon meet on yon hill”. I think they are among the most vivid and beautiful words Bush has ever written. Always compelled by the more unusual and old-fashioned in many ways, an album that came out in 1978 takes a lot from way further back. Wuthering Heights is a perfect example. Emily Brontë’s only novel came out in 1847. Almost an author or a poet, there is something classical about her songwriting. According to her Bush’s brother Paddy (who appeared on the album), she took sections from Lucy Wan and processed and used in a very unusual way.
PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Walter/WireImage/Getty Images
The end of the song, as I have said before, is an ellipsis. Rather than a big outro or something tidy, there is a sort of trailing off and echo into the void. “Oh, by the time you read this” seems to sign off a suicide note. Maybe a letter from a sister to her brother to say that by the time he reads this she will be gone. It is utterly heartbreaking - but the way Kate Bush delivers the words keeps it from being scarring or depressing. It is almost this acceptance that this is what had to happen or she is going to be a better place. I don’t know. I have always been fascinated by the title song. An artist that signs off her debut album with a song and line like that is fearless and incredibly daring. You sort of wait and wonder what the first song of her second album would sound like. As it was, Lionheart (also released in 1978) begins with the sumptuous Symphony in Blue. The Kick Inside is forty-five on 17th February, and it is great that people who have never heard it will experience this wonderful album. All of the thirteen songs are magnificent and distinct, but there is something about the stunning title track that stops me in my tracks! One of the best vocal performances on the album, Bush fills the song with so much conviction and emotion. That final line and note. The way she holds the note and lets her voice almost wither and disappear gradually. It is a remarkable moment on one of the most important debut albums ever! The Kick Inside’s title track ended a debut album from a superb and mesmeric talent. In that moment…
A legend was born.