this edition of the abbiestack is a part of music may, a monthlong series where i write about some of my favorite artists.
at the risk of sounding like An Old Person—i liked KB before gen alpha discovered her en masse thanks to a popular television show. like, no one has ever made purple look so good. especially lilac purple. my morning alarms are set to “cloudbusting” and “hounds of love.”
i remember the first time i heard “running up that hill (a deal with god).” it was a cover, actually, and not the original. back in middle school, about seventh grade or so, a friend of mine had given me a mix CD to listen to, and placebo’s cover was on it, and i remember that being one of the only songs i asked for an MP3 of. i thought it was haunting and evil and beautiful and it shook something in me. i don’t remember when i found out it was a cover, but i’m sure i was annoying about it, given i was thirteen and going through a bout of a very distinct type of misogyny that only tends to fester in girl-children of that age. i probably said the original was dogshit, and ugly, and “old,” because i was thirteen and dumb as rocks. listening to it now, the placebo cover is still fine, but how could you prefer anything to the original? like, ever? if there was ever a perfect song, it might be “running up that hill (a deal with god).” her work is so epic, so… cinematic. i find that it engulfs me completely, every time. in the dark theater of my mind i see such vivid imagery set to her warbling voice.
i wouldn’t return to kate bush for a long-ass time. she existed on the periphery for a while, for me. she dropped into my life piecemeal, a song here and a song there. if you read my april round-up, you’ll know the thanksgiving story of “wuthering heights,” but her work didn’t really calcify in my mind until i discovered “cloudbusting.”
i first heard “cloudbusting” in an edit, a gorgeous edit by lucy may on vimeo recounting 2020 in film. i love edits, i grew up on AMVs and the affection for that genre of thing never really left me. “cloudbusting” rocked my world. i’d say i’d never heard anything like it, but i’m sure that’s not exactly true. it’s not so unique that i would say something like that, but it’s truly revelatory to me in a way that makes it feel that unique. i became obsessed with it and i listened to it incessantly—unsurprisingly, it was my top song on my spotify wrapped for 2021, horrifically sitting atop a frankly uncomfortable amount of song covers from glee. truly, this was my music listening low point.
“cloudbusting” just makes me feel like nothing else. i always feel a buoyancy, when i listen, like i’m fucking levitating, like i can’t feel the ground beneath me. it’s meant to be played loud, as far as i’m concerned; meant to fill a room. the strings garrote me every time. it is simultaneously euphoric, melancholic, hopeful and hopeless. i don’t know, it rewrote my brain chemistry. ever since “cloudbusting,” i’ve been swimming in it. “hounds of love,” “the dreaming,” “never for ever.”
kate’s work is just so… namelessly ethereal. for me, it is like something beyond myself, beyond the concept of the self. there is so much breadth to her work, so much depth. every song is different and it’s hard to listen to any given song twice and hear it exactly the same way both times. i’m not a music historian, but her 80’s output is so experimental, even for an artist, now, especially a pop artist. listening to her oeuvre now, in 2024, it sounds both of its time and contemporary. her work could be recorded today and it would still sound fresh and different and unique and beautiful!!
if you’re familiar with the popular colloquialism “they lived, they served cunt, they died”—that’s basically kate’s career in a nutshell. like, yeah, she released music in the new millennium, but that’s not relevant to me. right now, at least. the 1980s belonged to her. can you imagine releasing “the dreaming” and “hounds of love” back-to-back?? no! you can’t! people don’t just do that!!! she lived! she served cunt! and she DIED (retreated into private life to release music at her own discretion without pressure from record labels)!!!!
favorites:
“wuthering heights”
“babooshka”
it’s crazy that she didn’t know what a babushka was until after she wrote and recorded this.
“cloudbusting”
as if i haven’t waxed poetic about this song enough!! a final note: i am terrified of airplanes. every time i’m on one, i pump this song up as high as i can and listen to it through take off to try and keep myself calm. hasn’t failed me yet!
“and dream of sheep”
“pull out the pin”
“the dreaming”
the australian accent is busted as hell but this song is so intense and cool and weird and ahead of its time both in its sound and in its themes. which isn’t to say that no one before, like, the year 2000 cared about the rights of indigenous people, but it’s just crazy that a popular artist of the time wrote a song about it and titled the whole album after that song. of course, it’s still relevant today.
When's the post about Ogbert the Nerd