KATE BUSH


The Kick Inside (1978)



Rating (Out of 10): 8.5



Tracklisting: Moving/The Saxophone Song/Strange Phenomena/Kite/The Man With The Child In His Eyes/Wuthering Heights/James And The Cold Gun/Feel It /Oh To Be In Love/L'Amour Looks Something Like You/Them Heavy People/Room For The Life/The Kick Inside

Kate Bush is undoubtedly one of the most unique female vocalists of all time. Before there was Tori Amos or Bjork, there was Kate Bush thinking outside the box, doing her own thing regardless of what anyone else thought, and providing a positive female role model for aspiring musicians. Just about all female singer songwriters to have emerged in the last 15 years have been influenced by Kate and it’s not difficult to see why. Kate Bush is one of very few artists who don’t need gimmicks or glamour or a ‘thing’ to get people interested. All she needs is her voice. She doesn’t even need a good song; her voice is so good se could sing the telephone directory and it would sound fabulous. Her voice is most definitely her trademark and it is one of the most unique voices in music history. With it’s classical, almost operatic sounding falsetto, it is a hypnotic, trance-inducing voice, something which no other artist has been able to emulate.

Kate Bush was only 19 when she exploded onto the music scene in the late 70’s providing a credible alternative to the punk scene. Her appeal lay in the fact that she was different. Young, fresh, yet not afraid to carve out a very individual identity for herself. Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour had discovered her and took her to EMI to signed her almost immediately, and success followed straight away with her first single going straight into the charts at number 1, and her debut album making the top 3.

‘The Kick Inside’ is made up of 15 songs, the majority of which had been written by Kate from between the ages of 16 and 19. Rather than getting the childish rantings and teenage trauma that you would expect from someone so young, the songs are actually very mature and very poetic. The most famous song is of course, ‘Wuthering Heights’, Kate’s first hit, and still her most famous. Based on Emily Bronte’s classic tale of love, loss and obsession, the song is mesmerizing and Kate gives the best vocal performance of her career. The other songs on the album are all good, steady, piano based pop songs, but they are elevated from the mediocre by Kate’s extraordinary vocal talent. ‘The Kick Inside’ is a very good debut album that showed right from the beginning what a unique talent Kate was. To produce something so innovative so young was quite an achievement and all that remained was to wonder what she would do next, and if she would able to keep up the momentum of her excellent debut.

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