I just ran into your site....and let me tell you. I like you. And this. Keep it up

-J

I'm glad the graphic designer hired for this album took approximately 3 minutes to create the cover in photoshop. So lame!

http://www.gigwise.com/news.asp?contentid=8891 has a brief little write up on this, interesting stuff...

Of course! "The true message will only be revealed when you buy the album."

Have you tried speeding the sample up, so that it takes 3 seconds to play instead of 30?

It says "All your base are belong to us."

This? Is so, so rad. Got here via Stereogum, by the by.

I don't know anything about Bitmaps And Waves, but the cover art only shows the envelope of the sound-- if it also had the pitch, it would look like a big gray zigzag, and not a solid blocky color (if that makes any sense!)

This was a fascinating and noble attempt at doing the impossible. The visual graph used in most wave editors is a representation of amplitude vs time. As your mp3 shows, the missing ingredients, frequency, timbre, etc are not represented here.

Perhaps a better approach would be to record the CD and study it for this sequence.

And doubtless, some one is gonna do that (or has already done that)

It's Kate Bush saying "Paul is dead" backwards, now go to bed.

There is a track on the upcoming album with birdsong, bet it's a sample of a sound file

you are awesome

A noble effort, thanks!

I'm a sound editor by profession and thus I spend a lot of time looking at waveforms and projections like these. All I can say is that you can't decode the image back to sound, since it's not zoomed out enough. You do not have enough information.
It's even hard to tell weather tis is speech at all. It could as well be any instrument, like a sax. There's also no information about the fundamental pitches, let alone the sound spectrum modulated over those.
To do a analysis, you need to be zoomed in to these waves a bit more. Then you can tell the chaotic moments like "t" and "s", and the pitchy ones. But even then, it's hard te understand it as speech. Speech is way to hi-res for such an image.

I enjoyed the article though. A lot.

Jesus, Kate if you read this - what a load of cranks. Please just keep writing music - you lot who do you think you are Steven Hawkins stop trying to analyse every breath Kate makes just sit back and enjoy like a fine wine. too much thinking hurts your brain!!! Love June
Ps Stop being "Heavy People "

I say let's give the graphic designer/art director some credit. Using very simple imagery and precise composition, he/she has evoked a graphic treatise on the blurred boundary between sound and vision. Maybe that's something Kate Bush explores on this disc? Sounds feasible given the painting/sunset/sunrise lyrical motif.

June--lighten up. Thinking isn't such a bad thing and nobody's getting hurt, so lay off.

Thanks a lot man. Listen, I'm a graphic designer, not for EMI or records for that matter, but I put a lot of work into 'encoding' my stuff. It's about being multi-layered, and for the people out there who want to go that extra mile, there's something around that corner for them. I won't presume to understand Ms. Bush's mind or motives but it seems like she applies a lot of depth to her music as well as her visuals, I'd go so far as to say I doubt it's a random wave, and i doubt she'd put it there if she didn't want people to perceive that it has some connxion, whether literal or just text painting. You're not a nutte, not obsessed, it's just like doing a crossword and my hat, for one, is off to you.

I am familiar with waveforms having used Sonic Foundry (now Sony) Sound Forge. I believe that Kate simply liked the way the waveform looked, that's it. I don't think there is any cryptic message although I would have to hear Aerial to know that.

It is an interesting project you took on. I say this while listening to the waveform you produced. Is it possible that maybe this waveform follows the mood from one track to the next? Great job at checking this out though.

I met Kate Bush at a party thrown for her by EMI in Canada. This was at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto. At that time they were giving her an album sales award (gold or platinum-don't remember) for Hounds Of Love. I will predict here that Aerial will become her biggest album, sales wise, to date. Now that all her clones are gone, Kate can come back to the forefront. Go figure, Kate's timing was just perfect. I have yet to find any tracks to hear from the album other than King Of The Mountain. No, wait, I thought I had Aerial Tal (track 13) but it's a fake. Yes, I have ordered the cd from a UK dealer as a matter of fact; I just want to hear the album already.

Anyway, all the best to Kate. Oh, and thanks for the letter you wrote and the Hounds Of Love album cover you signed for me Kate. I still believe that other than Joni Mitchell, there has been no better female singer ever than Kate.

Cat's out of the bag! Adam is Kate Bush!

Hey!
I really enjoyed it and I appreciated all the work you put into this.
I read some comments here, and all I can say to the 'critical voices' is this: Kate Bush has always been a pioneer, especially in the field of sound sampling and the use of vocals. Just listen to The Dreaming - Leave It Open - where she is flangering her voice into a deep, cool hollow. Pretty spaced-out for a 24-year-old lass!

I played the clip of the wavefile you created and it told me to go sell my car, divorce my wife and have a sex change! It's an encrypted mind control device you have unleashed on the world - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Hi great work! but thanks to a post by dannis on thee homeground forum
there is a photo ov thee back cover ov Aerial showing two more waveforms
could you combine these three waveforms?

photo here http://www.streetsonline.co.uk/default/templates/catalog/dvd_cover.jhtml?prod_id=50486367&op=large_image&image=IMGBC

I have a copy of the record and the soundwaves are also part of the booklet. On the last page it says these are the sounds of various species of birds. Kate loves birds, as you know. The album is spectacular and gets better on each listen.

'Aerial' is what you Americans call an antenna - turn the cover on its side and what do you see?.

Doh!

I am listening to Aerial right now for about the 15th time. I will go on record here as saying this is one of the 100 best rock/alternative or whatever albums ever produced. It is as good as Hounds Of Love and The Dreaming. I can just see the public response to this album being great as we get to hear very little real talent. Kate is one of a kind; so is this album.

Aerial is release Nov 6th in Europe, Nov 7th in North America. Go buy it because an album this important has not been released for over 20 years

just opened track 6 side 2 - the one where kate sings with the bird song- with wavelab and the shapes of those bits look very similar to the cover , thus probability is it is birdsong, perhaps not even used in the album, if I can be arsed I'll search the album for isolated snippets and check em out

Download this teaser file and all will be revealed. http://www.suspended-in-gaffa.com/kate/KateBushpreview.wmv

I read all these posts with interest! I love the way people are seeing this puzzle from various angles. There might possibly bee something that you're all missing though. Keep looking....

hi there-

i'm guessing others have probably figured this out by now, but i haven't done a comprehensive search on the web... anyway, i located the aerial cover waveform on the album itself. it's at 37:28 in CD2 (or 3:18 into track 9). it is, of course, a birdsong. here's a screen grab:

http://www.operazero.org/peamisc/bushbird.jpg

now, in this pic it doesn't look 100% like what you see on the cover, because the waveform as shown on the cover is just the birdsong solo'd, so you see the entire waveform in sharper detail. on the album itself it has other sounds around it, so the finer details at the beginning and then end of the waveform are obscured. but when you listen to the actual sound, you can hear those finer details and sonically they match up with the visual waveform as it appears on the album cover.

anyway, just thought you'd like to know!

pea

Great stuff - fantastic to read the article and then all the comments and actually be rewarded with hearing the waveform and having the puzzle solved, thanks to Marc, three posts above.

And I'm not convinced by the aerial - antenna theory. Aerial as in 'from the air' seems more in keeping with the album's themes.

I love the album. Who else will sing, in earnest, the words 'washing machine'?

Joe

You should play it faster. I tuned it up little bit, sounded more like a bird.

fascinating stuff guys, I'm a big Kate fan and agree 'aerial' has connotations for a lot more than just an antenna. Read somewhere bout it being based on some old text - my mind is very foggy so sorry for the lack of clarity. Anyhoo great stuff, ya just gotta love her.
C

Aerial is right up there with Hounds Of Love and The Dreaming as one of the best albums of Kate’s career. In some ways, Aerial is her best album. In terms of musical maturity, production, arrangement, concept etc.. this is one of the 100 best albums of this century in my opinion.

I always wonder how well a great album like this will do in the marketplace despite the fact that I do not work in the entertainment business and don’t stand to earn a dime from the success or failure of this album. Is the over 35 year old audience that embraced Kate’s music from say, 1978-80 and on going to respond favorably or at all to this long awaited album? The answer is very simple, who the hell knows. Will young listeners 16 to 29 embrace this album? Do many of them even know what real talent sounds like? How much of what they listen to is produced by a truly talented artist? Even the marketing wizards that will promote Aerial, some of whom that know how great an album it is don’t know for sure. EMI’s executives, A&R people etc.. don’t know for sure.

However, as a Kate fan and a long time lover of music in general, I would “guess” that this album will be freaking huge. Much bigger than EMI could or would imagine. Why, because an album of this caliber has not been produced by any rock/alternative recording artist for at least 15 years. Melody, song structure, imagination, musical vision….TALENT. What’s been missing from most of the crap (for lack of a better word) is TALENT.

Kate is one of the last few really talented recording artists that also happen to be at the top of her game. To think she managed this when her focus for the last 7 years has been mostly on what matters most to her, Bertie. When most recording artists have kids, that’s it for their musical inventiveness escapades. Not to mention the fact that Kate had to sit idly by while other so called artists made bank off of her creative output. Tory Amos should send about two thirds of her income to Kate. I wondered whether Tory was just filling a “Kate void” for some of those fans out there; she probably was, but not for me that’s for sure.

Some would argue that Aerial is not commercial enough. This much is true..in some odd ways. I say this because it broaches a very commercial accessibility without being too typically radio friendly. The next singles should be, in my humble opinion, How To Be Invisible, then, Somewhere In Between.

You might be surprised, by my third choice, Mrs.Bartoluzzi. It is become this song is reminiscent of Kate’s earliest work, only with a more mature voice. This song is so odd in it’s ode to the simplicity but meaningfullness of an appliance. This song reminds me of King Crimsons song Discipline in terms of the direct meaning of something that is consciously on the mind of the narrator. Who sings a song about “taking my laundry basket and putting all the dirty linen in it” and makes a great song out of that? “The waves are coming and they are going out”.. the imagery she conjurns up from the agitating cycle of a load of clothes being washed. This a great example of how much of a genius Kate is.

The duet that Kate does on Somewhere In Between with Rolf Harris I believe fits in perfectly with what the AOR (old term huh) audience responds to. Not a commercial duet which in of itself in un-usual. A song as personal as The Coral Room is reminiscent of a little song we all know that was featured in a John Hughes movie of all things, This Womans Work. Even a song like Mrs. Bartoluzzi with kates “wishy washy” rambling is a perfect example of how a musical genius can pull off something that, if sung by other artists might border on annoying.

Imagine Celine Dion singing Mrs. Bartoluzzi.. I don’t ever want to hear that if you know what I mean. The way Kate sings the words “washing machine” three times at the end of the song is awesome. She gets you thinking about it in a way that one normally would not. “It took hours and hours to scrub it out”.. sounds like Kate is singing about blood on the carpet, perhaps a murder. Then you realize, this is just a song about someone doing their laundry. The genius of this is that no other artist could get away with a song like this.

I notice the imagery of the “dancing skirt” mentioned in this song showing up in the King Of The Mountain (Elvis costume) video. The way Kate mimics the bird in Aerial Tal also shows a jazz sensibility that you rarely see in her music. What is that at the end of the song that she is singing by the way?

Every song on Aerial is great. The title track is the most emotionally charged track in my opinion. “What kind of language is this?” “I can’t hear a word your’e saying..” Using the birds as an underlying “score” with the violins as it were, is just amazing. Some great guitar playing on this album, in fact, all the musicians on this record are awesome. This is a well crafted and chosen collection of songs.

I love the hype surrounding the sound wave on the
When I heard The Dreaming for the first time in 1982 upon its release (I owned all of Kate’s albums up to that point), I couldn’t believe how original it was. I mean, Never For Ever was very original but The Dreaming was on another level. Kate was now the female equivalent of Peter Gabriel, sort of, but better. I love the fact that Kate takes musical risks not just for the sake of taking them. Also, the artists she chooses, who would have thought of having Peter Erskine or Gary Brooker (a welcome revisit) on their album?

I’m a drummer and fan of many great drummers including Peter Erskine. I saw him play live with Weather Report at the now defunct Ontario Place Forum. I would like to see Kate do an album with the compass point all stars as well. Namely, Wally Badarou, Sly & Robbie and others.

There are many artists I would like to see her work with. Wayne Shorter, John Cale, Adrian Belew, David Bowie to name a few. By the way, in the song Prologue, I love the way you think for a moment that Kate is going to do an opera passage, but she doesn’t. It’s like a progressive opera in a way. “It’s gonna be so good..” reminds be of Cloudbustings lyric. Her piano playing with that 10CC ish sounding background (I know that Lol Crème does some backing vocal on this album and the 10 CC influence is deffinitely heard on this song). It’s great to see that Kate appreciates this highly underrated band.

EMI should make sure the fans get a full length dvd for Aerial with interviews etc..There is a market for this just waiting to consume it. I mean, we should only know as much about the making of the album or Kate’s personal affairs as she wants us to know. I respect her need for privacy.

The articles that refer to her as a recluse etc.. are just ridiculous. There are many artists that rarely grant interviews or have a lot of exposure. Lou Reed, John Cale (who by the way, must do an album with Kate some day..) and others. I remember how we waited over 2 hours for Kate to emerge from wherever she was at that party in 1985 I refer to in my original email to you, below. Fasionably late, probably not. Her people were probably scopeing the room to make sure there were no undesirables, who knows. What ever the reason, Hounds Of Love was successful because it was a great album and there were a lucky select few that got to see Kate get an award for the sales of that album.

Also, Nocturn is pretty phenomenal. Just listen to it progress with the sound effects and then it turns into a modern Everything But The Girl sounding type song. The tempo, mood, groove etc.. except with Kate’s own stamp. “We long for something more” sort of like Kates version of “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” only with many layers and tectures. Is that Mick Karn playing bass on this one; no probably Kate right?

An artists work is more important than how they respond to the public or what their attitude towards fame in general is. The only negative that comes up in conversations I have had with others about Kate is how she keeps such a low profile and is not prolific enough. I mean, when most artists release new material on a regular basis, this is going to be obvious. On the other hand, you have artists like Prince that have a dozen unreleased albums in the can at any given time.

Anyway, this is not a too little too late scenario. If some believe it’s just a too late thing then they might not buy this album and they will just miss out on it. When I was at one of North America’s largest records shows recently, right here in Toronto in October, I talked about Aerial with a few people I knew were big Kate fans. This one guy who bought anything Kate related, a real collector, had admitted that he lost interest in her music over the last 12 years since The Red Shoes. I will be speaking to him again soon to see what he thinks of Aerial, which, by the way, he didn’t even know was coming out. Boy will he be surprised.

Here is my prediction.(since found to be unfairly un-available to Kate-She should have won record of the year!) Aerial will outsell any previous Kate Bush release. It will be nominated for and win a Grammy (not that that means anything considering some of what they have honoured in the past). This album will get some surprising itunes download action.

As I mentioned earlier, EMI should, in my opinion, release How To Be Invisible next, then, Somewhere In Between. Now, here is a suggestion that would be a welcome one by many music fans. Pink Floyd (all members except Syd ofcourse) a major 50 (arbitrary number) tour 8 city with…Kate Bush backing them up. Imagine that. A sellout in every city for a once in a lifetime tour. I mean, The Beatles are gone, what’s left?

Too bad they scrapped the Harvest label on which Kate was on the original roster. By the way, no offense to EMI or CBS intended here, but, make damn sure this album gets the promotion it deserves. There are only so many musical talents (getting records label deals) left.

A Sensual World was also great but didn’t really get the promo kick it deserved. I am selling part of my cd collection privately and posted the ad on Craigslist, Canuckaudiomart and a few other sites. Included in that ad was a promo banner for Aerial that I “borrowed” from another site. Check out the Kate Bush newsgroups, web sites like GaffaWeb etc.. to get the feedback as I’m sure EMI will do. In fact, if you like, I would consider a part time position gathering feedback info and input on Aerial if you like. I work in sales, but, music and film are my first loves.

-Rick Kahn (somewhere north)

surely its a blackbird call used on the album.??

Sure enough... It's the bird call. Yes, I had to check! I loaded it into Cool Edit and can see it rather clearly. Nice. ;-)

Great comments Rick. Too bad Kate does nothing to promote the album or her "career". I don't blame her for not wanting to be a promotion machine for her label but really, any artist has to give something back to their fans. At least do an appearance on Saturday Night Live again; Lorne would do that in a second I'm sure.

That breakfast that her son Bertie ate yesterday was paid for by me, you and 1,000's of other fans. Yet, Kate has rarely shown any appreciation for us whatsoever. It's almost like I want to stop being a fan cause she doesn't care. I hear she got some people turfed out of that party back in 1985 at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto.

Apparently she had industry people and such wait over 2 hours before she came out into the room. She must of had her people scope out the place before she showed up. I wonder, is Kate a paranoid schitzophrenic? Great talent but the lady has issues.

Hopefully for her sake now that she is a mother, for several years now, she will be less paranoid cause that kid may as well be booked into therapy cause he might need it.

Hopefully if she reads this site (which I highly doubt-some thought EMI set this whole thing up), say hello to your fans once in a while. At least do some tv appearances etc.. the kids today don't even know what talent is so it would be nice if they knew you existed. I mean this as a fan of your music.

I have an idea for Kate. Go on the BBC and do an interview explaining why you don't tour or promote your album. I mean your income could double by doing some promotion. Bayswater is expensive..

That 2nd last post is way too long. Interesting response but can the publisher of this site reduce it's length? Way too long. Kate has never spent as much time on pleasing her fans as this guy obviously did writing this letter.

he early 1970s record industry executives noticed that adventurous musicians could actually make money. Kate Bush was one of the artists to profit. In 1974 EMI made an unusual move and gave Bush some money "to grow up with," and she spent three years continuing her dance studies, honing her vocal skills, and developing a more mature songwriting style. In 1977 she recorded her first album, The Kick Inside, and the first single, "Wuthering Heights", reached the number one spot on the British pop chart just one month after its release in early 1978. However, though Kate Bush has been a best-selling artist in the U.K. for almost ten years, she stayed virtually unknown in the U.S.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 In the American musical mainstream, the most innovative performers are often among the least commercially successful. This seems to be somewhat less true in Great Britain, where avant-garde artists such as Laurie Anderson have reached the number one position on the pop singles chart, and where the most commercially successful female recording artist is Kate Bush. Kate Bush's music integrates intellectually challenging subject matter into complex and often experimental instrumental arrangements. Bush's conquest of the British pop music charts leads one to wonder how such an artist has been able to succeed within the constraints of the music industry, and what effect a pioneer like Bush has on mainstream popular music.
2 Kate Bush's entrance into the music business was unusual in itself. She began writing songs while still in her early teens, and by the time Bush was in her mid-teens she and her family had produced a demo tape which contained fifty of her compositions. Though every record label to which the tape was circulated turned it down, it was not long after this that friends of the Bush family brought Kate's music to the attention of Pink Floyd's guitarist David Gilmour. Gilmour was impressed by Bush's songwriting skill and four octave vocal range; and thus, in 1974 he financed a three song demo for Bush, made with Pink Floyd's producer Andrew Powell. The tape was sent to EMI, Pink Floyd's record company, where it was heard by Terry Slater, the executive who signed the Sex Pistols to a major label contract. Slater was quite impressed with the demo and signed Bush, even though she was only sixteen years old at the time. In recognition of her relative youth, EMI made an unusual move and gave Bush some money "to grow up with," and Bush spent three years continuing her dance studies, honing her vocal skills, and developing a more mature songwriting style (Vermorel, 1983: 86-87). In 1977 she recorded her first album, The Kick Inside, and the first single, "Wuthering Heights", reached the number one spot on the British pop chart just one month after its release in early 1978.
3 Kate Bush did not prove to be a one shot wonder. Her next album, 1979's Lionheart, was a critical disappointment, but it did produce a top twenty single in the U.K. With 1980's Never For Ever Bush debuted as coproducer, and by the time The Dreaming was released in 1982, Bush was the sole producer. She not only produced her 1985 album Hounds of Love, she recorded it in her own studio. Each album, with the exception of Lionheart, spawned more than one British top twenty hit. EMI is certainly thrilled with Kate Bush's success, yet it seems unlikely that the company could have predicted Bush's profitability at the time of her signing. Indeed, even her earliest recorded material dealt with unusual topics such as supernatural phenomena, incest, and poisoning, and Bush's vocal phrasing has always been somewhat bizarre, to say the least. Certainly then, Kate Bush's contract with EMI is the result of several conspiring factors. Though the relative importance of each element can only be guessed, EMI's market position and the nature of the recording industry in the 1970s provide clues into the conglomerate's motives for signing Kate Bush.
4 I do not think too much emphasis can be placed on the fact that it was David Gilmour who brought Kate Bush to the attention of EMI. At that point in time Pink Floyd was a very important act to the company. The progressive band had just released its eternally-selling Dark Side of the Moon on EMI's Harvest label in 1973, and Pink Floyd were respected and successful veterans of the art rock scene. Other members of Pink Floyd were seeking out fresh talent at the time, and EMI management would have surely thought it in the company's best interests to cater to the band members' whims.
5 The importance of Pink Floyd to EMI was symptomatic of a larger development in the British music industry in the early 1970s. A number of progressive artists were selling substantial quantities of records in both Great Britain and the United States. The acid rock of the late 1960s had evolved into the art rock of the 1970s, with bands like Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull, Traffic, and Genesis becoming industry mainstays. These artists experimented with synthesizers and other newly developed technologies in order to create fresh sound experiences. Once the commercial viability of these musicians was proved, record companies were eager to jump on the progressive bandwagon. One study of the musical tastes of British teenagers done in 1972 found that almost half of the middle class teens surveyed favored "progressive" music over mainstream pop (Murdock and Phelps, 1972: 150). Undoubtedly the middle class teen market was one that record companies desired to tap. EMI had already shown its commitment to progressive rock by launching the Harvest label, and by the early 1970s it was clear to industry executives that adventurous musicians could actually make money for a company. Thus, in 1974 EMI may have been more likely to believe that an experimental performance artist like Kate Bush could sell records than it might have later in the decade.
6 Another factor that cannot be overlooked is EMI's dominant position in the British record business during the early 1970s. Since 1950 the record industry in the U.K. had been dominated by two giants, EMI and British Decca, and EMI's position was strengthened substantially in the early 1960s when the label had the foresight to sign the Beatles to its Capitol division for American distribution of Beatles' records. Although increasing competition from American labels and the defection of the Beatles hurt EMI as the decade passed, the company mustered enough resources to form Harvest, its own progressive subsidiary, in 1968. By 1969 the corporation controlled an array of interests that gave EMI both horizontal and vertical control over numerous aspects of the music business. Therefore, it is not surprising that the conglomerate entered the 1970s in a strong position. By the middle of the decade, EMI was manufacturing one-fourth and distributing one-third of all records sold in England (Frith, 1981: 140-142).
7 Financial success clearly gave EMI the economic means to invest in the development of new talent. Moreover, it is in the long-term best interest of a large company to continually recruit new talent, because "nobody wants to depend on a small number of acts" (Records, 1980: 326). Labels lose artists to other companies, lifestyle alterations, and death. Record companies depend on a constant influx of new talent to ensure that the organization will survive, and, in the words of one observer, "the larger the company, the greater its need for new 'product'" (Stratton, 1982: 91).
8 The mid-1970s were definitely a key time for labels to be on the lookout for new talent. The British record industry was reaching a stagnation point, and Artist and Repertoire (A&R) people were searching for anything that might prove to be "a 'Next Big Thing', the new Beatles phenomenon," that would invigorate the industry (Laing, 1985: 7). After all, one reason behind the continuous search for new talent is the recognition by industry executives that they are working in a "taste" business. The commercial success of a particular artist or musical genre is often difficult to predict; therefore, the record industry must produce sounds which appeal to a variety of musical tastes. If, for example, Kate Bush or a Kate Bush clone became the "Next Big Thing," a label would not want to miss out financially on the trend. Thus, record companies see that it is wise to invest in a wide range of talent just in case something outside of the musical status quo captures the public's attention and wallets. EMI may have been gambling when it signed Kate Bush, but it was a gamble that paid. When "Wuthering Heights" reached the top of the British chart only EMI had a Kate Bush, and the idiosyncratic nature of Bush's music made the construction of a Kate Bush clone an accomplishment almost beyond the powers of imagination.
9 In addition, one should not forget that EMI signed Kate Bush at a time when visually-oriented rock performers were growing in popularity. Kate Bush's early career was aided by her training in mime and dance and her striking good looks. The visual presentation has always been an important component of Bush's music, and her single "Wuthering Heights" was released with a video at a time when such promotional clips were rather rare. By the time the video explosion reached Britain in the 1980s, old hands like David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Peter Gabriel, and Kate Bush found themselves in advantageous positions from which to exploit the medium.
10 EMI's position in the British music industry, Kate Bush's undeniable talent, the musical climate of the 1970s, the involvement of David Gilmour as a "gatekeeper", and a number of other factors conspired at that specific point in time to make the addition of Kate Bush to EMI's stable of musical talent seem a wise maneuver. Once Bush proved a profitable artist for EMI, the company probably thought it best not to tamper with a successful formula and allowed Bush a great deal of artistic freedom.
11 However, though Kate Bush has been a best-selling artist in the U.K. for almost ten years, she is virtually unknown in the U.S. It was only with her 1985 album, Hounds of Love, that Bush received any significant recognition in the U.S. Hounds of Love reached the 30th position on the Billboard album chart, largely on the strength of the single "Running Up That Hill", which peaked at 31 in November of 1985. However, Bush has yet to attain the kind of success in this country that she enjoys in her native England and Europe; and though "Running Up That Hill" brought Kate Bush new fans in the dance clubs, Bush seems destined to remain a strangely British and European phenomenon.
12 Indeed, the fact that Bush's music is popular on a mass level anywhere in the world seems unlikely, considering the lyric content of her songs and her odd vocal style. For example, in Bush's 1981 British hit "Sat In Your Lap", Bush sings of her crisis of spirituality in the chorus:
Some say that knowledge is something that you never have.
Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap.
Some say that heaven is hell.
Some say that hell is heaven.
However, Hounds of Love has been Bush's most lyrically complex album. The second side, titled "The Ninth Wave", consists of seven songs which cohere around the concept of a drowning victim's harrowing journey through the collective unconscious.
13 Though critics and interviewers now seem obsessed with the unusual nature of Bush's lyrics and sound, her popularity in non-English speaking countries suggests that other factors have allowed her to succeed in addition to, or perhaps despite, the unusual subject matter of her songs. Yet these factors have not been sufficient to ensure her success in the American market. Perhaps one reason that Bush's popularity in England has not been duplicated in the U.S. is because she is a very English singer. Throughout most of the history of rock music in Britain, singers have used accents imported from America (Laing, 1985: 26). This began to change in the early 1970s when singers like David Bowie and Bryan Ferry employed English accents, and Bush herself acknowledges their importance in the formation of her own vocal style, stating:
"I think most of the stuff I have liked has been English. With the majority of other people — well, they were listening to Elvis and people like that and most of their heroes were American. The artists I liked, such as Roxy Music and David Bowie, were all singing in English accents and, in fact, were among the few in England who were actually doing so at that time. I mean, Elton John, Robert Palmer and Robert Plant sound American when they sing" (Swales, 1986: 2-3).
14 Moreover, Bush's Englishness is not merely confined to her accent. As Terry Slater of EMI puts it:
"Kate is a real English girl, she's from the roots of Great Britain. It's not a gimmick or produced. She's the first really English girl singer for a long time" (Vermorel, 1983: 92).
Bush has even celebrated her native land in songs like "Oh England My Lionheart". The essential English quality of Bush's music and image has certainly had a profound impact on her popularity in the U.K. and perhaps on her inability to achieve widespread recognition in the U.S.
15 Bush appeared at a moment in the history of British rock in which a great deal of space for a singer like her had just opened up. In One Chord Wonders, Dave Laing notes one of the victories won by female singers in the punk era of the mid-1970s was the opportunity to experiment with a wider range of vocal sounds. Certainly Bush, who gained popularity in post-punk England with a repertoire of unearthly shrieks and guttural whispers, took advantage of this space to convey a disturbing breadth of emotion. Yet Bush's music was also a reaction against the one-dimensional angst and unorchestrated discord of punk, using melody and often frail vocals to create a surreal world of affect.
16 Which ultimately brings us back to the idea of image. Described by Laing as "poetically enigmatic," Kate Bush transcends more voyeuristic objectification (Laing, 1985: 89). In her videos and live performances, Bush presents a series of dramatic personas that distance the viewer, even as her lyrics invite him/her into the most recessed enclaves of Kate Bush's soul. The Kate Bush the viewer sees is merely a projection. Bush herself affirms this: "When I perform, I'm definitely someone else. She's a lot stronger and I wouldn't be as daring as her" (Vermorel, 1983: 83). On stage, she becomes Catherine of "Wuthering Heights", the outlaw of "James and the Cold Gun", the child-woman of "Feel It". Bush's enigmatic image has been important to her success in non-English speaking countries, as well as in the faddish, often image- oriented British Isles. However, those British listeners who were hooked by the novelty of "Wuthering Heights" discovered that there was a profound intelligence behind the image, an intelligence that allowed Bush to pass from the realm of mere image into the world of respected musicians.
17 The relatively small size of the British and other European pop music markets makes them more susceptible to the influence of images and fads than their American counterpart, and this fact undoubtedly accounts in part for Kate Bush's inability to achieve anything more than a cult following in the U.S. prior to the mid-1980s. Rather than focusing on her sexuality and striking physical appearance, American critics have tended to praise Bush for her skill and artistic vision; and the complex nature of these elements have generally limited Bush's American following to a handful of devoted fans. However, with "Running Up That Hill", Kate Bush gained devotees in American dance clubs, while the album Hounds of Love received considerable airplay on AOR radio. Thus, Bush was at once occupying the seemingly contradictory roles of progressive rock heroine and dance-funk queen, neither of which converged in any significant way with the American pop mainstream. Furthermore, few Americans were exceedingly aware of Bush's image. Although MTV gave substantial airplay to one of the two videos for "Running Up That Hill", visual exposure to Kate Bush has been quite limited in the United States. Her only tour, which occurred in 1979, was confined to England, and her controversial performance on Saturday Night Live in that year did not create a lasting impression in this country.
18 Yet even though Kate Bush herself has not been a significant presence in the American pop mainstream, her influence has been felt. Perhaps more than any other female artist, Kate Bush legitimized the use of the rather eccentric vocal ranges and phrasings that one can now find in the music of artists like Cyndi Lauper. Bush also helped to revolutionize the world of rock and pop instrumentation through her pioneering use of the Fairlight synthesizer, especially on Never For Ever and The Dreaming. By moving beyond pre-set and artificial synthesizer sounds, Bush discovered new ways to sample a variety of natural resonances in order to deepen the structure of her music. Only now are mainstream artists catching up with experimenters like Bush in their uses of synthesizer technology.
19 In spite of her importance in these two areas, Kate Bush has probably had the greatest impact in her role as a performance artist. To Bush, the visual presentation of the music and the music itself cannot be divorced, and thus, it is not surprising that she was the first female pop star to combine her music with classical and modern dance training. Bush's idea that the combination of music and movement allows the artist to express a more complex range of emotion has been translated, though in a simplified form, into the work of current American music video superstars like Madonna and Janet Jackson. What was once novelty has now become the norm.
20 While Kate Bush will probably never attain the level of popularity in the U.S. that she enjoys in the U.K. and Europe, she certainly has not been without influence in the world of mainstream pop music. Despite the unlikely nature of her British success, Kate Bush has persevered and used that success to gain greater artistic freedom, thus continuing to grow in her role as a pop music pioneer.

he early 1970s record industry executives noticed that adventurous musicians could actually make money. Kate Bush was one of the artists to profit. In 1974 EMI made an unusual move and gave Bush some money "to grow up with," and she spent three years continuing her dance studies, honing her vocal skills, and developing a more mature songwriting style. In 1977 she recorded her first album, The Kick Inside, and the first single, "Wuthering Heights", reached the number one spot on the British pop chart just one month after its release in early 1978. However, though Kate Bush has been a best-selling artist in the U.K. for almost ten years, she stayed virtually unknown in the U.S.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 In the American musical mainstream, the most innovative performers are often among the least commercially successful. This seems to be somewhat less true in Great Britain, where avant-garde artists such as Laurie Anderson have reached the number one position on the pop singles chart, and where the most commercially successful female recording artist is Kate Bush. Kate Bush's music integrates intellectually challenging subject matter into complex and often experimental instrumental arrangements. Bush's conquest of the British pop music charts leads one to wonder how such an artist has been able to succeed within the constraints of the music industry, and what effect a pioneer like Bush has on mainstream popular music.

2 Kate Bush's entrance into the music business was unusual in itself. She began writing songs while still in her early teens, and by the time Bush was in her mid-teens she and her family had produced a demo tape which contained fifty of her compositions. Though every record label to which the tape was circulated turned it down, it was not long after this that friends of the Bush family brought Kate's music to the attention of Pink Floyd's guitarist David Gilmour. Gilmour was impressed by Bush's songwriting skill and four octave vocal range; and thus, in 1974 he financed a three song demo for Bush, made with Pink Floyd's producer Andrew Powell. The tape was sent to EMI, Pink Floyd's record company, where it was heard by Terry Slater, the executive who signed the Sex Pistols to a major label contract. Slater was quite impressed with the demo and signed Bush, even though she was only sixteen years old at the time. In recognition of her relative youth, EMI made an unusual move and gave Bush some money "to grow up with," and Bush spent three years continuing her dance studies, honing her vocal skills, and developing a more mature songwriting style (Vermorel, 1983: 86-87). In 1977 she recorded her first album, The Kick Inside, and the first single, "Wuthering Heights", reached the number one spot on the British pop chart just one month after its release in early 1978.

3 Kate Bush did not prove to be a one shot wonder. Her next album, 1979's Lionheart, was a critical disappointment, but it did produce a top twenty single in the U.K. With 1980's Never For Ever Bush debuted as coproducer, and by the time The Dreaming was released in 1982, Bush was the sole producer. She not only produced her 1985 album Hounds of Love, she recorded it in her own studio. Each album, with the exception of Lionheart, spawned more than one British top twenty hit. EMI is certainly thrilled with Kate Bush's success, yet it seems unlikely that the company could have predicted Bush's profitability at the time of her signing. Indeed, even her earliest recorded material dealt with unusual topics such as supernatural phenomena, incest, and poisoning, and Bush's vocal phrasing has always been somewhat bizarre, to say the least. Certainly then, Kate Bush's contract with EMI is the result of several conspiring factors. Though the relative importance of each element can only be guessed, EMI's market position and the nature of the recording industry in the 1970s provide clues into the conglomerate's motives for signing Kate Bush.

I do not think too much emphasis can be placed on the fact that it was David Gilmour who brought Kate Bush to the attention of EMI. At that point in time Pink Floyd was a very important act to the company. The progressive band had just released its eternally-selling Dark Side of the Moon on EMI's Harvest label in 1973, and Pink Floyd were respected and successful veterans of the art rock scene. Other members of Pink Floyd were seeking out fresh talent at the time, and EMI management would have surely thought it in the company's best interests to cater to the band members' whims.

The importance of Pink Floyd to EMI was symptomatic of a larger development in the British music industry in the early 1970s. A number of progressive artists were selling substantial quantities of records in both Great Britain and the United States. The acid rock of the late 1960s had evolved into the art rock of the 1970s, with bands like Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull, Traffic, and Genesis becoming industry mainstays. These artists experimented with synthesizers and other newly developed technologies in order to create fresh sound experiences. Once the commercial viability of these musicians was proved, record companies were eager to jump on the progressive bandwagon. One study of the musical tastes of British teenagers done in 1972 found that almost half of the middle class teens surveyed favored "progressive" music over mainstream pop (Murdock and Phelps, 1972: 150). Undoubtedly the middle class teen market was one that record companies desired to tap. EMI had already shown its commitment to progressive rock by launching the Harvest label, and by the early 1970s it was clear to industry executives that adventurous musicians could actually make money for a company. Thus, in 1974 EMI may have been more likely to believe that an experimental performance artist like Kate Bush could sell records than it might have later in the decade.

Another factor that cannot be overlooked is EMI's dominant position in the British record business during the early 1970s. Since 1950 the record industry in the U.K. had been dominated by two giants, EMI and British Decca, and EMI's position was strengthened substantially in the early 1960s when the label had the foresight to sign the Beatles to its Capitol division for American distribution of Beatles' records. Although increasing competition from American labels and the defection of the Beatles hurt EMI as the decade passed, the company mustered enough resources to form Harvest, its own progressive subsidiary, in 1968. By 1969 the corporation controlled an array of interests that gave EMI both horizontal and vertical control over numerous aspects of the music business. Therefore, it is not surprising that the conglomerate entered the 1970s in a strong position. By the middle of the decade, EMI was manufacturing one-fourth and distributing one-third of all records sold in England (Frith, 1981: 140-142).

Financial success clearly gave EMI the economic means to invest in the development of new talent. Moreover, it is in the long-term best interest of a large company to continually recruit new talent, because "nobody wants to depend on a small number of acts" (Records, 1980: 326). Labels lose artists to other companies, lifestyle alterations, and death. Record companies depend on a constant influx of new talent to ensure that the organization will survive, and, in the words of one observer, "the larger the company, the greater its need for new 'product'" (Stratton, 1982: 91).

The mid-1970s were definitely a key time for labels to be on the lookout for new talent. The British record industry was reaching a stagnation point, and Artist and Repertoire (A&R) people were searching for anything that might prove to be "a 'Next Big Thing', the new Beatles phenomenon," that would invigorate the industry (Laing, 1985: 7). After all, one reason behind the continuous search for new talent is the recognition by industry executives that they are working in a "taste" business. The commercial success of a particular artist or musical genre is often difficult to predict; therefore, the record industry must produce sounds which appeal to a variety of musical tastes. If, for example, Kate Bush or a Kate Bush clone became the "Next Big Thing," a label would not want to miss out financially on the trend. Thus, record companies see that it is wise to invest in a wide range of talent just in case something outside of the musical status quo captures the public's attention and wallets. EMI may have been gambling when it signed Kate Bush, but it was a gamble that paid. When "Wuthering Heights" reached the top of the British chart only EMI had a Kate Bush, and the idiosyncratic nature of Bush's music made the construction of a Kate Bush clone an accomplishment almost beyond the powers of imagination.

In addition, one should not forget that EMI signed Kate Bush at a time when visually-oriented rock performers were growing in popularity. Kate Bush's early career was aided by her training in mime and dance and her striking good looks. The visual presentation has always been an important component of Bush's music, and her single "Wuthering Heights" was released with a video at a time when such promotional clips were rather rare. By the time the video explosion reached Britain in the 1980s, old hands like David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Peter Gabriel, and Kate Bush found themselves in advantageous positions from which to exploit the medium.

EMI's position in the British music industry, Kate Bush's undeniable talent, the musical climate of the 1970s, the involvement of David Gilmour as a "gatekeeper", and a number of other factors conspired at that specific point in time to make the addition of Kate Bush to EMI's stable of musical talent seem a wise maneuver. Once Bush proved a profitable artist for EMI, the company probably thought it best not to tamper with a successful formula and allowed Bush a great deal of artistic freedom.

However, though Kate Bush has been a best-selling artist in the U.K. for almost ten years, she is virtually unknown in the U.S. It was only with her 1985 album, Hounds of Love, that Bush received any significant recognition in the U.S. Hounds of Love reached the 30th position on the Billboard album chart, largely on the strength of the single "Running Up That Hill", which peaked at 31 in November of 1985. However, Bush has yet to attain the kind of success in this country that she enjoys in her native England and Europe; and though "Running Up That Hill" brought Kate Bush new fans in the dance clubs, Bush seems destined to remain a strangely British and European phenomenon.

Indeed, the fact that Bush's music is popular on a mass level anywhere in the world seems unlikely, considering the lyric content of her songs and her odd vocal style. For example, in Bush's 1981 British hit "Sat In Your Lap", Bush sings of her crisis of spirituality in the chorus:
Some say that knowledge is something that you never have.
Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap.
Some say that heaven is hell.
Some say that hell is heaven.
However, Hounds of Love has been Bush's most lyrically complex album. The second side, titled "The Ninth Wave", consists of seven songs which cohere around the concept of a drowning victim's harrowing journey through the collective unconscious.

Though critics and interviewers now seem obsessed with the unusual nature of Bush's lyrics and sound, her popularity in non-English speaking countries suggests that other factors have allowed her to succeed in addition to, or perhaps despite, the unusual subject matter of her songs. Yet these factors have not been sufficient to ensure her success in the American market. Perhaps one reason that Bush's popularity in England has not been duplicated in the U.S. is because she is a very English singer. Throughout most of the history of rock music in Britain, singers have used accents imported from America (Laing, 1985: 26). This began to change in the early 1970s when singers like David Bowie and Bryan Ferry employed English accents, and Bush herself acknowledges their importance in the formation of her own vocal style, stating:
"I think most of the stuff I have liked has been English. With the majority of other people — well, they were listening to Elvis and people like that and most of their heroes were American. The artists I liked, such as Roxy Music and David Bowie, were all singing in English accents and, in fact, were among the few in England who were actually doing so at that time. I mean, Elton John, Robert Palmer and Robert Plant sound American when they sing" (Swales, 1986: 2-3).

Moreover, Bush's Englishness is not merely confined to her accent. As Terry Slater of EMI puts it:
"Kate is a real English girl, she's from the roots of Great Britain. It's not a gimmick or produced. She's the first really English girl singer for a long time" (Vermorel, 1983: 92).
Bush has even celebrated her native land in songs like "Oh England My Lionheart". The essential English quality of Bush's music and image has certainly had a profound impact on her popularity in the U.K. and perhaps on her inability to achieve widespread recognition in the U.S.

Bush appeared at a moment in the history of British rock in which a great deal of space for a singer like her had just opened up. In One Chord Wonders, Dave Laing notes one of the victories won by female singers in the punk era of the mid-1970s was the opportunity to experiment with a wider range of vocal sounds. Certainly Bush, who gained popularity in post-punk England with a repertoire of unearthly shrieks and guttural whispers, took advantage of this space to convey a disturbing breadth of emotion. Yet Bush's music was also a reaction against the one-dimensional angst and unorchestrated discord of punk, using melody and often frail vocals to create a surreal world of affect.

Which ultimately brings us back to the idea of image. Described by Laing as "poetically enigmatic," Kate Bush transcends more voyeuristic objectification (Laing, 1985: 89). In her videos and live performances, Bush presents a series of dramatic personas that distance the viewer, even as her lyrics invite him/her into the most recessed enclaves of Kate Bush's soul. The Kate Bush the viewer sees is merely a projection. Bush herself affirms this: "When I perform, I'm definitely someone else. She's a lot stronger and I wouldn't be as daring as her" (Vermorel, 1983: 83). On stage, she becomes Catherine of "Wuthering Heights", the outlaw of "James and the Cold Gun", the child-woman of "Feel It". Bush's enigmatic image has been important to her success in non-English speaking countries, as well as in the faddish, often image- oriented British Isles. However, those British listeners who were hooked by the novelty of "Wuthering Heights" discovered that there was a profound intelligence behind the image, an intelligence that allowed Bush to pass from the realm of mere image into the world of respected musicians.

The relatively small size of the British and other European pop music markets makes them more susceptible to the influence of images and fads than their American counterpart, and this fact undoubtedly accounts in part for Kate Bush's inability to achieve anything more than a cult following in the U.S. prior to the mid-1980s. Rather than focusing on her sexuality and striking physical appearance, American critics have tended to praise Bush for her skill and artistic vision; and the complex nature of these elements have generally limited Bush's American following to a handful of devoted fans. However, with "Running Up That Hill", Kate Bush gained devotees in American dance clubs, while the album Hounds of Love received considerable airplay on AOR radio. Thus, Bush was at once occupying the seemingly contradictory roles of progressive rock heroine and dance-funk queen, neither of which converged in any significant way with the American pop mainstream. Furthermore, few Americans were exceedingly aware of Bush's image. Although MTV gave substantial airplay to one of the two videos for "Running Up That Hill", visual exposure to Kate Bush has been quite limited in the United States. Her only tour, which occurred in 1979, was confined to England, and her controversial performance on Saturday Night Live in that year did not create a lasting impression in this country.

Yet even though Kate Bush herself has not been a significant presence in the American pop mainstream, her influence has been felt. Perhaps more than any other female artist, Kate Bush legitimized the use of the rather eccentric vocal ranges and phrasings that one can now find in the music of artists like Cyndi Lauper. Bush also helped to revolutionize the world of rock and pop instrumentation through her pioneering use of the Fairlight synthesizer, especially on Never For Ever and The Dreaming. By moving beyond pre-set and artificial synthesizer sounds, Bush discovered new ways to sample a variety of natural resonances in order to deepen the structure of her music. Only now are mainstream artists catching up with experimenters like Bush in their uses of synthesizer technology.

In spite of her importance in these two areas, Kate Bush has probably had the greatest impact in her role as a performance artist. To Bush, the visual presentation of the music and the music itself cannot be divorced, and thus, it is not surprising that she was the first female pop star to combine her music with classical and modern dance training. Bush's idea that the combination of music and movement allows the artist to express a more complex range of emotion has been translated, though in a simplified form, into the work of current American music video superstars like Madonna and Janet Jackson. What was once novelty has now become the norm.

While Kate Bush will probably never attain the level of popularity in the U.S. that she enjoys in the U.K. and Europe, she certainly has not been without influence in the world of mainstream pop music. Despite the unlikely nature of her British success, Kate Bush has persevered and used that success to gain greater artistic freedom, thus continuing to grow in her role as a pop music pioneer.

That's a blackbird.

wow gold

wow power leveling