FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Rubberband Girl
_________
IN one of the last…
visits to Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts, I wanted to speak about a song I have written about a few times. I think that The Red Shoes is an album that gets overlooked and written off. Think about how critics always place it low in the rankings. I admit there are a couple of weaker songs and it is quite imbalanced when it comes to placing the best songs in the right order. Maybe the final three tracks are not as strong as the top three or those in the middle. That is not Kate Bush’s fault. As producer, she was aware of trying to make the best album possible and having a flow throughout. Her songwriting was still sharp, though some critics noted how there were one or two moments that lacked inspiration. Perhaps flat compared to what she produced on 1989’s The Sensual World. Bush was thirty-five when The Red Shoes arrived. She was at a point when she had been working flat-out for fifteen years or more. She had not had time to focus on herself and decide her future. Her mother died in 1992 and there was this incredibly busy period in 1993 And 1994 where Bush was promoting a lot and needed a break. 1992 was spent recording The Red Shoes. In fact, that album started taking shape two years before. It took quite a while for Bush to record and finalise The Red Shoes. In the 1990s, C.D.s were becoming more popular and artists were filling them up. Not confined by vinyl or cassette, as such, many albums were overlong and could do with a trim. As much as I love The Red Shoes, I do think that it could lose a song or two to make it tighter. The production sound very much of its time. You can hear an overload song like Why Should I Love You? and contrast that with the more natural and less adorned sound of The Sensual World.
In terms of singles, The Red Shoes’ five compared to The Sensual World’s three meant that Bush and EMI were making this bigger push. I am not sure why so many singles were released. Perhaps an effort to ensure that the album was a chart success. After success with her previous albums, The Red Shoes got to number two in the U.K. and twenty-eight in the U.S. An impressive placing! It is unusual that Eat the Music was released in the U.S. on 7th September, 1993. Although the song did well enough on a couple of U.S. charts, one wonders why EMI wanted this song released over there and Rubberband Girl elsewhere. I think that Eat the Music would have done better outside of the U.S. and Rubberband Girl might have been a bigger U.S. success. Considering this was 1993 and genres like Grunge and Alternative were bigger in America, perhaps it would have been a hard sell either way. In the U.K., the initial blooms of Britpop were taking shape. It was a year when artists such as The Breeders, Björk, P.J. Harvey and Suede were breaking through. Music with edge and invention. The Pop landscape would change again heading into 1994. I think there was this blend of incredible Rock and Alternative Dance. The Red Shoes was an album that did stand out in that respect. I really love Rubberband Girl. The first single from the album, it did get to twelve in the U.K. It reached the top forty in many countries. It made its way onto the U.S. charts too. A catchy chorus and this sense of defiance, Bush has a complex relationship with this song. She saw it as a silly throwaway song and considered not including it on The Red Shoes. However, as I have noted before, she did film two videos for it. Three versions of Rubberband Girl were released: an L.P. version, the extended mix, and a remix by American DJ Eric Kupper, which was released towards the end of 1994 on the And So Is Love single. It is interesting that the B-side in the U.K. was Big Stripey Lie; Show a Little Devotion in the U.S.
I shall come to the 1993 version soon enough. Even if Bush felt that the original was inessential and not her best work, she did rework it for 2011’s Director’s Cut. That album where she tackled again songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, the new version was more akin to The Rolling Stones. I prefer the original. However, it is noteworthy to consider she had an attachment to the song. Bush wanted at least to try and improve on it. I always think that the song nods to The Spinners’ The Rubberband Man. Not many rubberband-related songs! Bush was definitely in a position where she needed to bounce back. A song written fast in the studio – which was a rarity for her -, maybe there was this sense of strain and a need for a break. More a message to herself, this was an anthem of self-worth and defiance. Her mother was probably in her mind. I am not sure whether Hannah Bush was ill when Rubberband Girl was recorded. I am guessing it would have been a time when there was challenges and struggle. Bush not at her happiest perhaps. One need only look to 1993 and how she also launched into the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Maybe trying to distract herself. Critical reaction and embrace was lacking compared to previous years. It was a tough time that led to her spending time away from the spotlight of music. After 1993, there was sporadic activity until 2005’s Aerial. I will look at this more when I cover The Red Shoes for anniversary features closer to November. Released in the U.S. on 7th December, 1993, I do like how Bush got so see this song hit the charts and do quite well. I was perhaps a bit hasty when I said how she disliked the song. Although she knew it was a fun track, I think it could have easily been removed from The Red Shoes. A feeling it was maybe too commercial or not as substantial as other songs on the album. It is worth considering what Bush said about Rubberband Girl when she spoke with MOJO in 2011 about Director’s Cut:
“I thought the original ‘Rubberband’ was… Well, it’s a fun track. I was quite happy with the original, but I just wanted to do something really different. It is my least favourite track. I had considered taking it off to be honest. Because it didn’t feel quite as interesting as the other tracks. But I thought, at the same time, it was just a bit of fun and it felt like a good thing to go out with. It’s just a silly pop song really, I loved Danny Thompson’s bass on that, and of course Danny (McIntosh)’s guitar.
Mojo (UK), 2011”.
I am going to wrap things up in a minute. This is a deep cut. Although it was a single and has been played on the radio, many people do not know about this song. It does not get as much focus as most other Kate Bush tracks. Overlooked like much of The Red Shoes. In terms of critical reaction to Rubberband Girl, there was a range of opinions:
“This is Bush at her most direct… rhythmic, almost raunchy workout with the occasional outburst of rock guitar, strange lyrics – and a wired vocal impression of said office accessory being stretched. It is also a very commercial rejoinder.
Alan Jones, Music Week, 28 August 1993
Perhaps a little too up tempo for my tastes – I prefer my Bush all dreamy and mysterious. A minus the drums… but it still has enough kookiness to draw me under. And she’s still the only artist for whom the word “kooky” isn’t an insult.
Everett True, Melody Maker, 11 September 1993”.
There is this playfulness throughout the song. I love the lyrics and the images she summons up: “A rubberband bouncing back to life/A rubberband bend the beat/If I could learn to give like a rubberband/I’d be back on my feet/A rubberband hold me trousers up/A rubberband ponytails/If I could learn to twang like a Rubberband/I’d be a rubberband girl”. The incredible guitar work from Danny McIntosh. Whereas Danny Thompson’s bass joined Mcintosh’s guitar for the Director’s Cut version, John Gilbin provided bass on The Red Shoes’ version. Joined by Nigel Hitchcock, Neil Sidwell, Paul Spong, and Steve Sidwell on brass, this is this mix of the brash and soulful. It is a shame that not a lot of positive things have been written about Rubberband Girl. Not a lot, full stop. Message boards asking if people like the song. One critics took against the Director’s Cut version – finding it funny and a bit tragic.
I have a lot of time for Rubberband Girl and have explored it a few times. I will touch on it for The Red Shoes anniversary features, and I may well revisit it this time next year. There is definitely mixed reception to a song that confidently opens The Red Shoes. Bush could have chosen the title track or Eat the Music. A song with that particular energy. She clearly had faith in Rubberband Girl by making it the first thing people heard when The Red Shoes came out in November 1993. This 2011 review notes how Rubberband Girl was released at a time when other styles and artists were in favour:
“But “Rubberband Girl” is neither angsty nor ironic. It plies a mid-tempo pop thrum, and with its crisp drumming and springing bassline, might be better suited to the late ’80s than four years deep into the last decade of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in a small town yet to receive Triple J’s broadcast transmissions, the only exposure I had to the station were the commercials for it placed in the midst of the music video television program “Rage.” In those, Triple J looked like a chaotic expression of a youth culture I, having just hit double digits in age, was on the cusp of joining. Apart from some spastic moans and excitable horn blats in its outro, however, “Rubberband Girl” has little to do with jejune liveliness. With its stiff percussion and indie-disco groove, it comes off far too polite for a song about learning to loosen up.
This is more a problem with memories of early ’90s culture than with Bush herself. An alt. staple of the ’80s, she was grandmothered into this new era. Alfred Soto once compared a Bush song from this era to a party guest “with smeared makeup, drunk and warbling off-key, but friendly with a couple of the hosts and thus tolerated. But not invited back.” That makes sense; after all, “Rubberband Girl”‘s parent album, The Red Shoes, would be the last collection of new material Bush would release until 2005. In “Rubberband Girl” we see the untidy present succumb to ordered history”.
A successful single in the U.K., I think that we should play and celebrate Rubberband Girl more. A song that has had more than one video and album version, Bush did not want to forget about it. I think it really represents her 1992 and 1993. Years where she suffered loss and came back. A song full of energy and fun, it is hard to think why anyone would take against it. Different to the tone and sound of The Sensual World, this was Kate Bush keeping fresh and evolving. Maybe hard to stand out and get the same reaction in 1993 considering how the music landscape had shifted, The Red Shoes is seen as one of her lesser albums because it was at-odds with that 1993 scene. Bush’s 1980s work stronger and better-sounding. In any case, I feel that everyone should give Rubberband Girl…
A fair shot.