FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes at Thirty-One
it is the thirty-first anniversary of Kate Bush’s seventh studio album, The Red Shoes. Although some felt a note of disappointment, I wanted to stand up and shine a light on the brilliance of this album. A look at the lyrics and personal openness throughout. I think 1989’s The Sensual World was quite a personal album, though it is clear that The Red Shoes existed at a time of personal change and loss. Not to start with something downbeat, there were things weighing on Kate Bush’s mind through 1992 and 1993. On 14th February, 1992, Kate Bush’s mother Hannah died of cancer aged seventy-three. It was a devastating moment where Bush felt like the world had ended. Working at East Wickham Farm was changed. There was this vacuum. The ever-present and hospitable Mrs. Bush was now not there. Someone who had been omnipresent for decades was now gone. Kate Bush being Kate Bush, she was still focused on work. Maybe as a coping mechanism, Bush could not let herself succumb to the weight and impact of that loss. It would have completely taken her. I will explore this a bit more for a feature where I look at Kate Bush’s 1994. How that was a year where there was a real black dog at the door. I wanted to give some background to the album and how there was a lot going on. Even if Bush wrote many of The Red Shoes’ songs before her mother died, there was still this atmosphere of illness and loss that makes the album this very personal and emotional album. Even though Bush went on, the impact of her mother’s death meant that she could not do sessions for a while. Things had to stop at a point. Bush couldn’t write at times and the pain and trauma was too great.
Even so, things did go on. Even if some feel that there is an unfocused aspect to the album, I do feel that we are seeing some fascinating sides to Kate Bush. The production on the album is not her best. She did address this a bit with 2011’s Director’s Cut. It was the age of the C.D. Maybe compacted and a little too long, you have this very different sound compared to her earlier work. Some very busy and layered songs alongside some raw and emotional moments. I do think that there is plenty of joy and meditations on love. Eat the Music is so joyful and vivid. Bursting with flavour and colour, the metaphors for love and food work really well. The Red Shoes has that energy and dance. I will not talk about the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve for this feature. Regardless, Bush was keen to turn to film and create something bigger and more ambitious than a music video. One can trace a line back to that when we think of visual albums and long-form videos of today. Rubberband Girl is about defiance and bouncing back. Bush writing it in the studio; perhaps an attempt to convince herself she could come back and was dealing with this sense of grief or impending loss. However, I don’t agree that The Red Shoes is aimless or lacks punch. I think Bush ponders loss and love a lot. Lily is her consulting a real-life healer, Lily Cornfield. Bush perhaps turning to people to process what was happening. Her relationship with Del Palmer was fractured and changed. It was instable at various points since they met many years earlier, though she did not more stability at a tough time. Her mother was ill and died in 1992. That turning to the spiritual. The way Bush talks about life. On Moments of Pleasure, there is this heartbreaking line: “Just being alive it can really hurt”. Kate Bush had lost a lot of friends. Alan Murphy (Smurf) and John Barrett (who, as Graeme Thomson writes in his Kate Bush biography, was nicknamed Teddy (from the children’s show, Andy Pandy); Bush was Loopy Lou and Jon Kelly Andy).
All of this might sound like The Red Shoes was a disaster. An album where loss and depression leads to poor songs and choices. That is not the case. In the second anniversary feature, I am going to go more into the songs. Even if the move from analogue to digital perhaps washed some of the emotion and purity to songs, I think that The Red Shoes is among her most fascinating and open albums. Many felt Bush hid behind characters. She was not as interested in putting herself out there. Her debut single, of course, saw her take the form of Wuthering Heights’ Catherine Earnshaw. Bush fascinated by T.V. and literate and bringing those worlds into her songs. The Red Shoes was released when Bush was thirty-five. She was at a stage in life where she lost a long-term relationship, her mother and friends. It was a challenging time and she definitely was looking to spend time away from the spotlight. As such, I think we get this glimpse of a woman opening her heart and putting herself more into the music.
If joyful and uplifting songs is Bush showing strength at a difficult time, I think a few standout songs get to the heart of things. Moments of Pleasure, And So Is Love and You’re the One are devastating in their own way. Away from the passionate flair of Eat the Music, here we see Kate Bush processing and handling a loss of companionship and some heartbreak. Her relationship with Del Palmer was coming to and end around the time of The Red Shoes and The Line, the Cross and the Curve. We can focus on the exhaustion and negativity around The Red Shoes and the release of The Line, the Cross and the Curve. In 1994, accompanied by Del Palmer, Bush flew to New York to promote it. She arrived for a signing session at Tower Records in a white limousine. Wearing brown shades and looking drained, that was a moment when she was wanting to be anywhere but there. I don’t think that The Red Shoes is a failure or album where Bush lost her way.
She got together with Dan McIntosh. Father to her son, Bertie, there was this new beginning and stability. Her break-up with Del Palmer was not publicly shared. It was quite amicable. The fact they remained close friends is wonderful. I think, in a sense, Palmer accompanied Bush and was good friends because she suffered loss and bereavement. He was a rock and remained her engineer up to 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. We sadly lost him earlier this year. I think we get a rare opportunity to hear Kate Bush exposed and letting us into her heart. She did that in a different way when she released Aerial on 7th November, 2005. Her mother still very much in her heart for A Coral Room. Her young son Bertie at the core of everything. I love The Red Shoes. Sure, the final few tracks are not her best and there is an issue with the tracklisting. A slight rearrange could have given the album more strength and consistency. I would love to hear the entire album stripped back in terms of its production. Maybe an analogue version of the album. This thing about it being the runt and worst album. Think about the joy you get. The beauty and heart-stopping Moments of Pleasure. How vulnerable Bush is at times. Something we might not have heard when she was in her teens and twenties. How, when you lose your mother, you are not a little girl/boy anymore. It instantly takes away this sense of childhood and innocence. This protective field has gone. Because of that, I think we feel this heartbeat and heartache. This pondering of life and lost love. Also, some truly tender and soul-baring moments.
I am going to into more depth regarding the songs of The Red Shoes for the second anniversary feature. I wanted to discuss Bush’s personal life and what was happening around the time of recording and release. Even if some critics were cold on the album, it did reach number two in the U.K. Selling well and charting high in the U.S. too (at twenty-eight), there is also a wonderful and varied list of personnel through The Red Shoes – including Prince, Nigel Kennedy, Jeff Beck and the Trio Bulgarka. I know The Red Shoes was reissued in 2023 as a Dracula colour vinyl two-L.P. The original came out on cassette and MiniDisc. I would love to own a cassette version! I am going to end with some reviews of The Red Shoes. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for their great work:
“How many of us could stand the self-imposed exile that has been the adult life of Kate Bush. She’s elevated privacy to an art-form… it’s her most personal album to date, yet it is her most accessible, in which the listener can identify directly with the pain she’s trying to pull herself through… A truly exceptional album.
Terry Staunton, NME, 6 November 1993
As a whole, The Red Shoes is more musically varied than thematically, as Bush’s constant returning to the links between love, spirituality and creativity becomes wearing. In compensation, there’s a rich pan-global tapestry woven here in which the textures and designs from distant cultures are being used not for effect, but for the way they express an emotional truth beyond mere words.
Andy Gill, Q, November 1993
There is nothing here that quite compares with her most splendid songs – 1980’s Breating and 1986’s The Big Sky… but The Red Shoes is a triumph nonetheless…
Tom Hibbert, The Independent on Sunday, 14 November 1993
Bush’s most pensive album yet… its mood of wistful mystery maintained by elaborate arrangements… the occasional number is overwrought, but the best confirm Bush as an artist of substance.
Neil Spencer, The Observer, 7 November 1993
This plunge into Bush’s sensual world sometimes leaves the listener gasping in awe at the lush musical landscapes spawned by her unfettered romanticism, but also sometimes gasping for breath in the rarefied despair of a troubled heart… Bush keeps her balance by composing music that’s never complacent, always exmploring fresh dimensions of her wideranging vision and musical interests.
Rick Mason, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 31 October 1993”.
On 1st November, the wonderful The Red Shoes turns thirty-one. Not a lot of people have written about it. Not in passionate or deep tones. Not in a really positive and kind nature. I hope I have conveyed some love and respect for the album! People need to hear it. It is such an important moment in Kate Bush’s career. In the second and final anniversary feature, I will go inside different songs and dig up some interviews from 1993 where Bush spoke about the album. I think that the brilliant and revealing The Red Shoes is…
A gem that deserves more love.