FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart
Why Should I Love You?
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THIS is a Kate Bush track…
that will divide fans. There are a few reason I wanted to come to The Red Shoes. For a start, its title track celebrated its twenty-ninth anniversary on 5th April. The fourth single from the 1993 album, it is terrific and underrated. I feel that the first side to The Red Shoes boasts some of Bush’s best material. One of the problems with The Red Shoes in terms of how it was reviewed is the sequencing. Even if the production suffers some of the worst issues of the '90s in terms of a slightly tinny and compressed sound, I do think that Bush’s production and instincts through out are good. A lot of the songs are not too crowded in terms of instruments and vocals. The Red Shoes’ title track is joyful and spirited. The Red Shoes is the brightest spot from the second half of the album. In the first, we have four of the singles: Rubberband Girl, And So Is Love, Eat the Music and Moments of Pleasure. There is a top-heavy aspect to The Red Shoes. That is not to say that the second half is weak or does not have memorable moments. A deep cut I want to explore has other meaning and huge relevance too. I have written about this before, but Kate Bush and Prince had a mutual respect and similarities. They were both born in 1958. The late legend’s sixty-fifth birthday is in June – just a month before Bush’s. Both released several albums in the same year, including their 1978 debuts.
In terms of musical gifts, originality, and work rate, they had shared D.N.A. I love the fact that they got to work with each other more than once. Even if they never shared a studio, Prince included Kate Bush on his 1996 album, Emancipation. I did not know this until now, but she provided backing vocals for many of the songs on that album. I think it is one of his best albums of the ‘90s. The track, My Computer, is a full collaboration with Bush. Prince had a lot of respect and love for her. Three years prior to her appearing on a Prince album, the Paisley Park icon was included on The Red Shoes. I think that Why Should I Love You? should have been the final track. Rather than the slower and more emotional You’re the One, the bigger and bolder Why Should I Love You? would have been better. Even if that song does have some emotional weight, it does seem more like an album closer. A deep cut that you do not hear played much, there are some wonderfully odd things about the song. Apart from Prince featuring. Lenny Henry also provides some backing vocals! Because Bush and Prince were in different countries and neither got to meet and share a studio, Bush asked Prince in 1991 to contribute backing vocals. Recording the song at Abbey Road’s Studio One, I think her original idea was him just to do some vocals.
Not only are Prince and Lenny Henry in the vocal mix. Trio Bulgarka are in there. They first worked with Bush on her previous album, 1989’s The Sensual World; they were asked back for The Red Shoes. The Bulgarian trio are a bit low in the mix. I think that Prince sort of took the song more in a direction he wanted. Maybe that struggle between something similar Bush needed and the complex and layered that Prince made, some have noted how Why Should I Love You? is a mess. It is not the strongest song on The Red Shoes, but I do really like it! The song should be played more, if only to attract more attention to an album that turns thirty in November and deserves a reissue. With some interesting B-sides such as Show a Little Devotion, and some other deep cuts like Big Stripey Lie and Top of the City, it is a fascinating work. I hope there is something done for the thirtieth anniversary. Bush did perform songs from The Red Shoes for Before the Dawn in 2014. Why Should I Love You? was not among them but, as Prince was still with us (he died in 2016), he could have provided a guest vocal. As it is, Prince invested in the song and added vocals and instruments at his Paisley Park Studios. When Kate Bush and Del Palmer (who engineered and mixed the track, and also played on it too (he and Bush were in a long-term relationship until 1993) listened to Prince's returned track, they weren't sure what to do with it! They worked on it on and off for two years to try to make it more of a Kate Bush song. Regardless of a difficult history and completion, I still think the final track is epic.
It is lush and has a huge chorus. I would be interested to see what the ‘Prince version’ sounded like! The fact the two appeared on The Red Shoe is a reason to celebrate. Why Should I Love You? I previously wrote about Prince and Kate Bush and I did quote from this VICE. Written after Prince’s death, the fact is Bush had a lot of love for him and deeply missed him when the world lost the genius:
“Bush was in a strange place when she met the Purple One. Her close friend and guitarist Alan Murphy had just died of AIDS-related pneumonia, she was going through the motions of a relationship breakdown, and was teetering on the cusp of a break from music, which, when it came, would actually last for 12 years. Prince, on the other hand, was going through one of his many spiritual rebirths. He had just emerged from the murky shadows of The Black Album, a creation he withdrew a week after release because he was convinced it was an evil, omnipotent force. He vaulted out of that hole, into a period of making music that was upbeat, pop-tinged and pumped up. In essence, the two artists’ headspaces could not really have been in more opposite places; Prince, artistically baptised and ready to change the world, and Kate Bush, surrounded by a fog of melancholia and disarray.
Prince had been a huge Kate Bush admirer for years. In emails exchanged in 1995 between Prince’s then-engineer Michael Koppelman and Bush’s then-engineer Del Palmer, Koppelman says that Prince described her as his “favourite woman”. But despite both artists being active since the 70s, it wasn’t until 1990 that they actually met in real life. Bush attended a Prince gig at Wembley during his monumental Nude Tour, asked to meet him backstage, and the rest is God-like genius collaboration history.
Perhaps it was the sheer distance between their headspaces at the time that led to what happened. Bush asked Prince to contribute a few background vocals to a song called “Why Should I Love You”, which she had just recorded in full at Abbey Road Studios. But when Prince received the track, he ignored the intructions and dismantled the entire thing like a crazed mechanic taking apart old cars on his backyard. He wanted to inject himself into the very heart of it, weaving his sound amongst her sound, giving it a new soul entirely. As Koppelman explains, “We essentially created a new song on a new piece of tape and then flew all of Kate's tracks back on top of it… Prince stacked a bunch of keys, guitars, bass, etc, on it, and then went to sing background vocals.”
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith
Despite being the lovechild of two of humanity’s greatest music minds, the resulting track is not often mentioned on your average BBC3 pop retrospective presented by Lauren Laverne. It’s startlingly brilliant, with sometimes bizarre, musical depths. It begins as a typical Kate Bush creation; her stratospheric vocals rising across a strange organ melody and tumbling drums. But then, about a minute through, it mutates like an unstable element being dropped into boiling water. Prince invades in a huge wave of gospel sound, the pair singing in unison: “Of all of people in the world, why should I love you?” By the time it reaches the 2-minute mark, it has been completely permeated with that Paisley Park flavour; smatters of electric guitar and rich walls of vocals spilling over its borders. The purple sound arrives like a tsunami, seemingly too vivid to suppress.
Even today, the track is divisive, with some heralding it as a slice of profound art, and others filling fan forums with long rants that essentially boil down to: “It’s tripe.” But two decades later, we can look upon the final version with something resembling objectivity. It’s an endlessly fascinating creation that continues to sparkle with strangeness, forever flitting between blissfulness and an almost painful sadness upon every listen. Even the lyrics reveal an inner turmoil: “Have you ever seen a picture of Jesus laughing? Mmm, do you think he had a beautiful smile?” Kate Bush’s soaring voice wavers, as if she’s asking Prince to convince her”.
A great song that I think should be played more and known more widely, I was thinking about it because I have been writing about Prince. He died in April 2016, so it is sad to think it is almost seven years since we lost him. Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes turns thirty in November, and one of its underrated songs is a deep cut that…
YOU need to hear.