Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/16/the-instinctive-genius-of-kate-bushs-wuthering-heights.html
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I don’t even think Wuthering Heights is the best track on The Kick Inside.
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What do you think is as a matter of interest?
I think my favourite track of hers from her pre self produced days is Breathing. She was straining at the leash there and broke free on the utterly genius the dreaming. Which I get isn’t as strong song wise, or at least as relatable as the bounds of love, but which I love beyond bounds.
ETA
The Hounds of love. I love beyond hounds. Well apart from the one gnawing a bone at my beloved’s feet right now.
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I love both Moving and L’Amour Looks Something Like You.
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would “instinctive genius” imply that she didn’t know what she was doing?
just because she was young, didn’t mean it wasn’t deliberate. like a lot of ground breaking musicians she was steeped in music growing up, and really worked at it.
if that’s a quote from the video, then it’s doubly weird that it takes a male youtuber to explain the intellectual depth of a female’s artist’s instinct. 
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As an 18 yr old she was already a veteren musician in some ways. I remember somebody recouning a story of her after The Kick Inside being on some daytime TV show (Pebble Mill IIRC) so the house band were playing the song and she walked in on the rehearsal and schooled them all.
Woman has chops. Also an innovative producer.
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I’m not sniffing any disrespect or dismissal in the actual video, which bears watching.
He mentions that she didn’t have any formal training in music theory, which is true, and relevant since she’s doing unexpected things. But it’s not like that counts against you in late-20th-century pop music if people like your sound.
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Pretty sure she did grades on the piano, and while we would have looked down on some elements of that traditional training when we were kids (modes weren’t taught until quite advanced, extended chords weren’t in it) the harmonic grounding and understanding of intervals is literally music theory. You couldn’t pass the practicals if you didn’t pas the theory. Think you could carry the theory for a couple of grades.
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Well, I mean, I had 10+ years of piano and viola before I took my first theory course in college. A lot of what I learned in that class was just crystallizing what I knew from performance, but it also showed me a whole intellectual dimension to it that I wouldn’t have “instinctively” understood on my own. It also showed me the structure and composition of musical styles other than the ones I played.
I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a nontrivial distinction between knowing in your fingers that there are major and minor chords, consonant and dissonant intervals, etc., and the way it all gets put together in formal academic training. That “rarefied” stuff gets taught because it’s a genuinely useful tool for composers, but not an indispensable one—or we wouldn’t be raving about the music Kate Bush wrote without it.
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The oddest thing is that the Gilmour-esque guitar solo isn’t David Gilmour, despite his role in discovering her. It’s Alan Parsons guitarist Ian Bairnson.
She re-recorded her vocal for her Greatest Hits. It’s just as good and a bit less peak-ish in the high notes, probably better overall. But part of the charm of the song is the wild singing, and tamping it down a notch makes the character just a little bit less “crazy”
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My personal faves from The Kick Inside are “Kite” and “Them Heavy People”!
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I like this song:
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I love how people avoid describing what that song is about!
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I’m still waiting for the day someone does a metal version of “Hammer Horror”
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We must ask the Cavalera brothers immediately!
By the way, thanks for the vídeo link. We started a Bush cult at home.
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Oh my god its a jungle in here. You’ve got wild animals loose in here.
(song by Kate, and a very good fan made video).
oh crap, you just reminded me the hounds of love. what a great song! but i still use cloudbusting and running up that hill as introductory songs for the new listeners.
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Adorable dorks
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