Naturally, I’m pleased that it’s such a momentous record, even though I obviously can’t claim any credit - it is indeed the first self-penned Number One by a solo female. Technically speaking, we will eventually hit a song from Tapestry, but let’s say no more for the nonce. Oh, and apparently ‘Running Up That Hill’ was Number 30 in the US.
As regards this one, I do feel a bit of distance from it just because I’m a bloke, but I wouldn’t give it less than maybe 9.5 - I deduct half a mark for that guitar solo which never feels like part of the song to me. Mind you, I don’t actually own the proper version of the track, which seems a bit of an omission on my part.

Oh, and I like the Futureheads, who found their own point even if it wasn’t the one originally intended. That China Drum cover is terrible though - meatheaded “Oooh look there’s a slow song let’s play it fast” rubbish.

KB has always struck me as a lot more…performative, I guess, than TA, and far less prone to being inappropriate or crude; thematically, TA is a lot more confrontational, the violence in KB’s work seems to occur most when she’s being overtly theatrical, playing roles and characters which are not her (’Get Out Of My House’, ‘Houdini’, ‘Wuthering Heights’ too I guess!), and her most cathartic, traditionally confessional tracks are some of her most gentle (’This Woman’s Work’, ‘Man With The Child In His Eyes’, ‘Moments Of Pleasure’). Whereas TA’s catharsis is often this raging, angry thing (’Precious Things’, ‘Crucify’, Blood Roses’) which often seems like it’ll spiral out of control, were it not for TA’s songcrafting talents and technical chops; it was actually when I first heard Fleetwood Mac that I thought “oh so that’s where Tori got her inspiration from.

I look forward to discussing Tori in her own right in approx. 20 years’ time!

I quite agree that KB and TA are the products of their respective nationalities, but I think there’s greater aesthetic overlap, particularly musically, than you would suggest. (By the way, most of the students to whom I presented KB thought them kindred spirits.) Kate can be ferociously cathartic in some of her work, and I think it valid to say that she employs the “fractured prism” technique to great effect, particularly in her “concept albums” (if one chooses to see them as such) The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. (I’ve actually lectured on this topic–so I can go on and on. But I’ll spare everyone the long-winded discourse.)

I think what you’re implying is that KB’s subject matter lies more in her imagination and TA’s more in her personal experience. Yes and no. I grant you that KB has never done anything as unnervingly personal as “Me and a Gun,” but there’s no shortage of violence and grittiness in her work, even if it is presented in a more–what?–metaphorical manner. (This, too, could be a US vs UK thing).

This is not to disparage TA by any means. Like KB, she is a genuine eccentric gifted with the extraordinary sort of vision few others possess. But I do think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that there’s no influence there. (TA’s disavowal notwithstanding, KB wasn’t completely unknown in the US–she actually had some chart presence in the 80s.)

It’s interesting to note, though, that when VH1 did their “100 Most Important Women in Rock” programme (or something to that effect) back in the late 1990s), KB placed somewhere in the middle range of the list, despite this being a US-based project. And what artist do you think they interviewed about the significance of her work? TA!

BTW, TA nowadays occasionally sings “Running Up That Hill” in her live shows.

I’ve been proper hooked since Hounds Of Love, of course.

I entry to Kate Bush was via Tori, too - as a teenager I was a Tori obsessive, probably much along the lines of your students, and I think in around 1997 someone nudged me towards the Kate back catalogue - but I’ve never thought their aesthetics overlapped all that much, bar their similar vocal range. To be slightly reductive, I’ve always felt that Kate’s work is situated more in the realm of the imagination (not a million miles from the fantasy genre) whereas Tori focuses on personal experience and catharsis, albeit viewed through a very fractured prism at times. Plus, the work of both is really heavily informed by their nationalities.

(I think Tori’s gone on the record as saying she’d never heard Kate Bush until after she’d written most of Little Earthquakes, as KB never really hit big in the US.)

Let me be completely honest about this - I fell in love with Kate Bush.

No need to be embarrassed about that! (So did I!)

Well there’s a link between Wagner and Modernism!

Indeed–and quite an extraordinary one! Most of the major Modernists eventually found it necessary to deal with W eventually.

I could suggest an interesting book on the topic. (And, no–I didn’t write it.)

What a shame nothing of Carole King’s from Tapestry or elsewhere made the cut (but then everybody had the album.) Popular is even more depressingly short of women writers than it is of women performers.

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Well there’s a link between Wagner and Modernism!

As, of course, would be

Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind
Wo weilest du?

I’m much more a Tristan fan than I am a Ring fan.

Sorry I didn’t catch the attribution last time around.

[Wagner's] characters are all doomed robots in the opulent machinery of the vast masterwork

Well, that’s spot on–and what’s most infuriating about them and often makes them seem as if they’re completely empty-headed (e.g., Siegfried–can’t stand that part of the Ring). Perhaps Brünnhilde is the exception, but a lot of good it did her. I like the Rheinmaidens–they don’t care, so they’re the only ones in the whole bloody cycle to escape unscathed. And they get the gold back in the end.

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Kate, who creates an interesting array of personae (if not exactly characters), isn’t at all Wagnerian in that sense. Hers almost always struggle against the “machinery” (or fate, if you will), particularly in the songs in Never Forever,The Dreaming, andHounds of Love.

I would have to take all three albums if I were bound for a desert island–but first I was struggle against going in the first place.

Addendum: The pic sleeve shown for this thread was, as I recall, banned in the US as the cover for The Kick Inside because of the crucifixion motif–a photo of Kate, in red boots and posed in a “crotch shot” position, was deemed more suitable.

people are stressing the lushness to get this back to wagnerlike, but it’s the siren-like wildness of the wail — the way it just cuts through everything and says here i am, you can’t pretend this isn’t here and isn’t me — that’s unwagnerlike: his characters are all doomed robots in the opulent machinery of the vast masterwork (haha the version of die walkure i saw in strasbourg a coupla months back actually togged the valkyries as girl-cybermen which was very awesome); the expressionists as a generation were all teen wagner-fans going yes yes i love opulence too but what about ME and my emo-goth passions; so klimt has this suffocating richness AND these hard knotty muscle-lines; kate’s a dancer — i think that’s pretty important

no not wagner — way too compressed, and the singing is modernist not romantic! more like pierrot lunaire!

(Sorry, I’m jet-lagged after the adventure Down Under, have some pretty bad eyestrain, and need to get back to work on my proposal if I’m going to go back to Oz on a fellowship next year, so forgive my laziness.)

The point is well taken. Yes, yes, yes. Don’t get me going on this. Kate Bush is a Modernist. At least a neo-Modernist. I came to that conclusion back in 1986 while undergoing the grueling “Readings in British Modernism” curriculum for the first level PhD exams. I was listening to HoL side two and reading T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets at the same time while my brain was on overload. The two have been fused in my mind ever since, even to the point that when someone mentions “Dry Salvages,” I automatically think, “All you sailors, get out of the wind, water / All you fishermen, head for home/ Go to sleep little earth.”

Or am I thinking of Phlebas the Phoenician Sailor?

“Fear death by water.”

Now as to musical Modernism . . . I’m going to think about Schoenberg and Pierrot Lunaire. Someone is on to something . . . .

Ask me again when I’m not so tired and stressed out.