Remember over this past summer when every Top 50 radio station was playing a song released almost forty years ago? Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” was put back on the charts due to its appearance in the popular Netflix series Stranger Things and circulation on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
This is not Bush’s first song that gained traction among younger crowds. Since the creation of TikTok, the songs “Babooska” and “Wuthering Heights” had their second flash of fame, widening the following of Kate Bush’s discography[EH1] . The new attention from recent trends and long-standing appreciation by older listeners, the entirety of “Hounds of Love” deserves equal appraisal forits sonic eccentricity and spectacular lyricism.
The album is unique in its craft; it is broken up into two concepts.The first concept shares the album’s title, Hounds of Love, including five independent songs about different aspects of love. This portion is mostly full of more upbeat and cheery rhythms, with songs like “The Big Sky” and “Cloudbusting” leaving listeners longing to run and twirl in the wind with my arms thrown wide with joy. The title track, “Hounds of Love,” creatively layered two different string melodies, one sharp and quick, the other soft and elongated, to imitate being both chased, then embraced by love.
The second portion of the album fits as its own miniature conceptual cluster. Titled The Ninth Wave,it’s based on the Alfred Tennyson poem. “The Coming of Arthur,” which has, hidden in a dense stanza, a description of a wave powerful enough to capsize a boat1. That is where Bush’s tale begins, with a woman drifting through a body of water trying to stay afloat.
Each of the seven songs belonging to The Ninth Wave are sonically unique.Yet each captures Bush’s strong vocal and lyrical talent. Songs like “Waking the Witch” and “Hello Earth” weave in audio samples that add flare and depth without taking away from the musicality of the songs.
The “Hounds of Love” demonstrates, not only the creative genius of Kate Bush, but also the creative potential that all music can reach. I highly recommend giving the album a listen, I’ve been coming back to it repeatedly for almost two years now.
1 Link to Tennyson’s “The Coming of Arthur”
