FEATURE:
The Anonymous Emily
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush’s Wow at Forty-Six
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I will repeat…
some information I have included before prior to moving on. As Kate Bush’s Wow turns forty-six on 9th March, it is worth spending some time with one of her greatest singles. I shall end with some links to features where Wow was ranked highly in the list of the best Kate Bush tracks. The second single released from Bush’s underrated second studio album, Lionheart, Wow reached number sixteen in the U.K. It was a bigger chart success than its predecessor, Hammer Horror. I love that Wow features Brian Bath, Del Palmer and Paddy Bush. Close friends and family. Players in the KT Bush Band. Bush originally wanted her band and players for Lionheart but they were replaced by Andrew Powell’s suggestions. Musicians who performed on The Kick Inside. I love the fact that the video for Wow was censored by the BBC because the song was considered risqué. The video depicts Kate Bush patting her bottom while singing "he's too busy hitting the Vaseline”. Before I move along, I want to bring back in some interview samples where Bush spoke about Wow and its inspiration:
“I’ve really enjoyed recording ‘Wow’. I’m very, very pleased with my vocal performance on that, because we did it a few times, and although it was all in tune and it was okay, there was just something missing. And we went back and did it again and it just happened, and I’ve really pleased with that, it was very satisfying.
Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978
‘Wow’ is a song about the music business, not just rock music but show business in general, including acting and theatre. People say that the music business is about ripoffs, the rat race, competition, strain, people trying to cut you down, and so on, and though that’s all there, there’s also the magic. It was sparked off when I sat down to try and write a Pink Floyd song, something spacey; Though I’m not surprised no-one has picked that up, it’s not really recognisable as that, in the same way as people haven’t noticed that ‘Kite’ is a Bob Marley song, and ‘Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake’ is a Patti Smith song. When I wrote it I didn’t envisage performing it – the performance when it happened was an interpretation of the words I’d already written. I first made up the visuals in a hotel room in New Zealand, when I had half an hour to make up a routine and prepare for a TV show. I sat down and listened to the song through once, and the whirling seemed to fit the music. Those who were at the last concert of the tour at Hammersmith must have noticed a frogman appear through the dry ice it was one of the crew’s many last night ‘pranks’ and was really amazing. I’d have liked to have had it in every show.
There is surprisingly little written about Wow. One of Bush’s signature songs, it would be nice to see more articles published. I am going to feed in some details from an article I have referenced before when investigating Wow. It is a shame also that people write off Lionheart and feel it is a bad album. I think it is a wonderful album that has a few real standout songs…and the rest is pretty solid. It is a pity and regret that Bush was not given more time by EMI. She could have created something richer where she could write all new songs. As it was, Lionheart’s ten tracks features only three new songs. Wow is an older track that I think would have been considered for The Kick Inside. I want to come to an article from The Guardian that talked about the amazing and wonderful Wow:
“In late 1978 the 20-year-old Bush still seemed an ingenue and it was always going to be tough following an album that contained Wuthering Heights and The Man With the Child in His Eyes. She later complained she felt under pressure from EMI to release Lionheart too early, a problem she made sure she never experienced again. But Wow was always a song that stood on its own merits. It contains many of her trademarks: enigmatic intertextual lyrics, unfeasibly high-pitched vocals that fall unexpectedly to an absurd low note (the last "wow" of each chorus is particularly amusing), tantalising verses followed by a cascading chorus. Musically, Wow is typical of her early work, with pretty woodwind, piano and strings complementing a lyrical bass line.
The song, as far an anyone other than its author knows for certain, appears to be about struggling actors and the disappointments of fame. In the video its most famous lines – "He'll never make the scene/ He'll never make the Sweeney/ Be that movie queen/ He's too busy hitting the vaseline" – were expressed through her much-parodied mime-the-lyrics dancing style. The word "Sweeney" was accompanied by her firing a gun and "hitting the vaseline" by her tapping her backside. Viewers were invited to draw their own conclusions.
Bush is such a singular talent it has become too easy to dismiss her as an eccentric, peripheral figure. It was around the time Wow was released that the pastiches began, most famously by Pamela Stephenson on Not the Nine O'Clock News. But those memories would not do justice to her achievements in carving out a career of complete artistic independence and integrity after starting out as a teenager in a male-dominated world, chaperoned by members of England's prog-rock elite. Her influence on so many female (and male) songwriters, musicians and performers since has been enormous, even if they don't know it themselves”.
The critical response for Wow was largely sexist and dismissive. Sounds were appallingly crude and insulting in their review: “I hear this mediocre chanteuse crooning her way through this silly song. (…) I realise that a lot of people would like to go to bed with her, but buying all her records seems a curious way of expressing such desires”. Record Mirror felt that the song was eerie and interesting but the “verses still sound a little muddled but get better with playing”. That was one of the more generous assessments. In years since, Wow is rightly hailed as a brilliant song. One of the gems from Lionheart. I am not sure if I have quoted from Dreams of Orgonon and this take on Wow:
“Bush understands true fandom, where someone gets to enjoy the beauty of a creator’s work in private. It also pertains to going out and seeing them in concert, having your favorite singer onstage in front of you and hearing your favorite songs live. This is the kind of invigoration that’s present in a number of Bush’s songs of the period: allowing yourself to be a swooning fangirl.
“Wow” is the paragon of Bush’s sometimes loopy and adolescent enthusiasm, in the vein of “Violin.” Its chorus of “wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, WOW! UnbelIEVable!” sounds like scribblings on an asylum wall, bolstered by the singing of a dame who’s had a bit too much MDMA. It’s almost like Bush is asking to be made fun of, with her play at wide-eyed innocence at the wonders of showbiz. Yet Bush is clearly winking at the audience, as her all-too-knowing performance in the song’s music video makes clear. In this era, Bush has a habit in videos of staring directly into the camera like she expects to shatter the lens with the sheer power of her gaze (she later supplants this strategy by staring past the camera longingly). As memorable as her early videos are, a lot of their longevity comes from Bush’s goofy miming. This may be why the “Wow” video has the reputation it has, with Bush flailing her arms around in circles while repeatedly crying “wow” like a maniac. The song is sheer mad giddiness, sounding like Nina Hagen let loose in the Hammersmith Odeon.
The elation of the chorus is belied by the knowing facetiousness of the verses, with the shit-eating grin they flash at showbiz. Bush’s sweet-natured delivery of “we think you’re amazing!” efficiently hides the fact those lines are probably written with gritted teeth. It’s not that “Wow” is bitter, but it’s taking a few potshots as it falls through showbiz. The first verse is rife with tension, laden as it is with the song’s intro, acting as something of a rehearsal for the chorus. There’s a clash of the rehearsed tendencies of the song with Bush’s more communal ones. To her, creativity is a collaborative act, where the audience and artist unite to move each other. “We’re all alone on the stage tonight” sounds like Bush’s invitation to the audience, as if the stage is an arena for both player and spectator”.
I have asked before who the ‘Emily’ is Kate Bush mentions right at the start of the song. I am not sure if she has been asked about that before. Wow has risen in critics’ estimation since its release. Last year, when ranking her fifty best songs, MOJO placed it ninth (“TOTP dimmed the lights when she sang “Vaseline” and patted her bum. Whether or not the period’s pisstaking about her hippy-throwback exclamations of “Wow!” and “Amazing!” provoked the song, she made the most of it with a grotesque Guignol demolition of showbiz bullshit flattery and backstabbing (“We’d give you a part, my love/But…”). The staying power comes from the emotional distance between those squealing to grande-dame-contralto chorus “Wows” and the melancholy strings when she hesitantly begins and then fades to vanishing at the end with the fear-ridden, “We’re all alone on the stage tonight”). In 2020, when The Guardian ranked Bush’s singles, Wow came in thirteenth. In 2023, this is what PROG said about Wow: “‘We’re all alone on the stage tonight,’ sings Bush in her musings on the highs and lows of a life in showbusiness, as an actor dreaming of stardom endures ignominy and being used for sex, cheekily implied in the lyric about ‘hitting the Vaseline’. Robin Armstrong, Cosmograf: “It’s super-proggy in terms of theme and modulation yet somehow manages to stick to a pop record structure. It’s a masterclass of concise epics. The lyrics are so poignant, and to me they speak of a tortured artist, underappreciated, and forced to live up to expectations as an entertainer. “I think she’s one of the most underrated piano players ever. I’m always drawn in by her beautiful chord structures and motifs. She just has a way of laying down this beautiful carpet of piano for her vocals”. Last year, Classic Pop ranked Kate Bush’s forty best songs. Wow came in seventh.
I am going to end with this feature from Far Out Magazine. They discussed Wow and its merits back in January. After a somewhat disappointing chart position for Hammer Horror (forty-four in the U.K.), there is no telling what could have been if Wow had done poorly. Would a third album be possible? Would Bush’s career have ended? Even if Wow didn’t quite do anything as dramatic as save her career, it did show that she could not be written off. Someone able to engage the public in spite of parody and criticism from the press:
“As with all sophomore releases, the label normally wants the product as fast as possible, which means digging in the vaults to pull out songs that might not have been able to be fleshed out for the first record. Although Bush could still whip any idea into something magical, ‘Wow’ is one of the stranger offerings that she made around that time.
Despite the chorus itself being singled out for repeating the same word over and over again, Bush is seething about the pressures that come with being in the music business. Since her mentor, David Gilmour, already knew the ins and outs of what the industry had to offer, seeing her ridicule the corporate suits for only wanting a piece of her and not caring about the music is the closest thing to a punk rock statement she was ever going to make.
In the background, though, Bush was already looking to move things around. If the industry didn’t have her best interests in mind, she was going to build her own company around her, eventually working out deals where everything was kept in-house, whether that was her putting together her one and only major tour or having complete freedom whenever she made another record.
And musically, ‘Wow’ is also a sneak preview of what Bush would be doing on some of her later records. Nothing that she ever made could be considered safe and radio-friendly from front to end, but given its weird structure and often-parodied chorus, there are bits and pieces of the studio wackiness that would appear on albums like The Dreaming later, especially when she starts singing outside of her usual range.
But that’s the beauty of Bush’s music, to begin with. Most people can stare on in stark amazement at someone willing to have the guts to do something so weird on the world’s stage, but Bush never seemed to make some kind of bold leap unless she had a good reason. That way, the music was less about the commercial appeal and more akin to a spirit that was being driven out of her.
So when people look back on the music video and her wild dance moves, they might want to look a little bit closer. Anyone can look at that kind of performance once and think it looks a little bit goofy, but if they start listening to what the song is about, Bush is being fairly on the nose about becoming a borderline puppet for whatever some so-called “commercial music expert” wants to see out of their talent”.
With a shorter single edit compared to the album version (about twenty seconds shorter), I think that Wow remains underplayed and under-discussed. Even if it did get parodied and there was this sense of ridicule from some., there is no denying the brilliance of the song. Perhaps the standout song off of Lionheart, it stands proudly alongside Kate Bush’s best records. An idiosyncratic and memorable single that was an international chart success. A simply unbelievable song, it still sound startling and phenomenal all of these years later! If Hammer Horror took Bush slightly into the critical and commercial shadows, Wow brought her right back to…
CENTRE stage.