I bought Hounds of Love when it came out. It was rarely off of my turntable, and I still have a regularly played CD in the car. It kinda makes me a bit sad when an album as special as that (for me any way) is appropriated by advertising agencies or the likes of Netflix and then just ruined. Kinda in the same way many favourite but little known tunes are devalued when they're gotten hold of by advertising agencies. I've never been able to play Leftfield's Phat Planet after Guinness wrecked that for me.
Thankfully I don't listen to music radio or watch TV/Cable/Sat so I'm not being exposed to the oversaturation of once upon a time nice things.
I know there are people that feel really passionately about Kate Bush and I guess I just don't get it. She's fine! I respect the initiative she took in the 80s. But as a songwriter, for me at least, she has real Tina Belcher energy.
Could you briefly explain what a Tina Belcher energy is for those who haven't seen enough of "Bob's Burgers" to know the characters and their personalities? (I know that show has received quite a bit of acclaim and is almost certainly something I should watch, but I have a "no new scripted series on Fox" policy after how they handled Firefly, Futurama, Lucifer, and Terra Nova, so now wait until I'm sure a Fox series is going to have a proper ending before taking it up).
What I like about Kate Bush's songwriting is that many of her songs cover relations or are from viewpoints that are quite different from those usually found in popular music.
For example "Breathing", from the viewpoint of a fetus during or shortly after a nuclear war. "The Kick Inside"--consequences of incest. "The Infant Kiss"--Governess dealing with children possessed by the spirits of the dead previous governess and the dead lover of the previous governess.
The best way I can put it without going too deep down this rabbit hole is "benign adolescent prurience". She writes a lot of erotic zombie fiction.
Also: there are more good episodes of Bob's Burgers than there are of the Simpsons. You're seriously missing out.
Also I feel bad pointing this out but one thing fetuses don't do in the womb is...
She's just so weird! If you like Kate Bush a lot, and I sort of get why her weirdness is endearing, you'll like Tina Belcher. Just a lot of the same energy.
I'd heard that Kate wrote hundreds of songs before she was 17/18, many only released years later, so maybe that's where you're getting the "adolescent" vibe from.
I would argue that it's not about "songwriting" per se as much as a total commitment to expression that exceeds almost anybody else while still being pop. That, combined with her fantastic voice -- which is way too high for most pop and only works because she has a tremendous instrument and really wraps it around the lyrics. The fact that she sings over her whole range is both the hardest thing to get used to and one of the things that makes her a giant.
Finally, it's what she represents, which is an artist who was able, over and over again, to pursue her exact vision while giving zero fs what EMI wanted -- and was able to release top selling albums (in the UK) in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s.
She's probably the only pop artist that is worth engaging with as a genuinely mind-broadening experience that should be undertaken precisely becauseyou might not like it at first, like some classical or jazz.
Thankfully I don't listen to music radio or watch TV/Cable/Sat so I'm not being exposed to the oversaturation of once upon a time nice things.
Maybe time to re-visit The Dreaming :)