Credit: Far Out / Kate Bush
Sun 23 August 2026 10:00, UK
Saying that a Kate Bush album isn’t what everyone expected would be like saying that water is wet and that getting kicked in the teeth doesn’t feel great.
Every single one of her albums was meant to go against the grain to a certain degree, and each trip to the studio was an opportunity for her to make music that went well outside the confines of what pop musicians were supposed to do. She was never afraid to get a little bit weird every now and again, but she knew that there were some albums that she knew went a little bit too far.
But once someone tunes into Bush’s wavelength for an entire project, it’s not hard to see what she’s going for across her albums. She has made an entire career about doing a deep dive into anything and everything that she does, and even though there are plenty of genius pop songs scattered throughout her discography, she wanted to take the unconventional route whenever she had the chance.
Then again, would you expect anything less from someone who debuted with ‘Wuthering Heights’? The entire song is one of the most tonally ingenious tunes to ever come across the pop charts, and even though Bush had plenty more where that came from, it took a while before she was fully acclimatised to the studio. She didn’t want to become a child of the stage, so after her first tour, Never For Ever started to become the ideal canvas for her to work on.
All of the albums were meant to take you on a ride, but even by the strange metric that we grade her songs on, The Dreaming is a bit of an odd duck in her discography. This was the first time that she fully utilised the studio, and while that made for most people’s favourite record when it came to any other rock band at the time, some people didn’t exactly understand what they were holding when they put the record on the turntable.
Bush even referred to the album as the ‘she’s gone mad’ record, but she knew that nothing could get in the way of her getting these ideas down on tape, saying, “I had bit of a rough time with The Dreaming but I’m not surprised really. It’s kind of a weird album. But it was a very important period for me, I just wanted to do something that meant something to me and wasn’t at all commercial. I was happy with what we achieved, even though a lot of people didn’t get it. It consolidated feelings in me about doing things that felt right as opposed to doing things so they’d be incredibly popular.”
There are still some moments on the record that do sound normal, but there are also tracks that could give small children nightmares if they aren’t careful. In fact, if you look at the way that her career trajectory ended up panning out, Bush seemed to have a lot more in common with Steely Dan more than anyone else when looking at how both bands really shaped themselves on their records.
Further reading: From The Vault
That might sound insane, but just like Steely Dan had to find their edge on The Royal Scam before releasing Aja, so too did Bush have to make a few harsh tunes before making Hounds of Love. The latter might be the acknowledged masterpiece that no one can get enough of, but a lot of the cerebral ideas that she was talking about in her magnum opus wouldn’t have been possible had she not learned from The Dreaming.
The final product does have a lot of strange tunes, and it’s going to take a while before it necessarily clicks with everyone, but there’s a certain charm in an album that absolutely refuses to meet you halfway. Bush wasn’t going to sacrifice an ounce of her artistry for pop hits, and if she was going to be one of the biggest stars in the world, she was going to be doing it on her terms first.
