The Kate Bush Singles Rate: The Countdown

Why have you gone from not being fussed about her to listening to that song specifically :D
 
27. Hammer Horror (from Lionheart)


With a MINOR crisis averted, let’s keep rolling on. Early days Kate nods a reference to the Hammer Films company (as you do) with this, and conceived the idea of the song after viewing Man of a Thousand Faces. It fared a bit worse than her previous two singles, being the first to miss the top ten, but then you lot didn’t care too much for this either!

Average score: 6.9375
Highest score: 10 (Gangsta Nancy Lam)
Lowest score: 5 (VoR, funky, jyxz)
 
Hammer Horror is really good, it just doesn't quite hold up to some other stuff that is still to come. I've always had a soft spot for it though. It was a bit of a brave choice as a lead single from Lionheart when she had Wow waiting in the wings, a pattern she then repeated with Breathing and Babooshka.
 
Lionheart is largely underwhelming, but I love 'Hammer Horror'. The DRAMA of it all. A fun little story too - is the narrator as innocent as she makes out, or is she being driven to madness by GUILT AND SHAME?

The video(?) is also one of my favourite moments of batshit interpretive dance Kate.
 
Soldi said:
27. Hammer Horror (from Lionheart)


With a MINOR crisis averted, let’s keep rolling on. Early days Kate nods a reference to the Hammer Films company (as you do) with this, and conceived the idea of the song after viewing Man of a Thousand Faces. It fared a bit worse than her previous two singles, being the first to miss the top ten, but then you lot didn’t care too much for this either!

Average score: 6.9375
Highest score: 10 (Gangsta Nancy Lam)
Lowest score: 5 (VoR, funky, jyxz)
Click to expand...


There goes a fiver if ever I heard one.

It's just a bit aimless, but the verses ain't so bad and Kate's see you with them hands performance is still striking.
 
I actually think Hammer Horror really reads as a 'hang about, we haven't got a Wuthering Heights on this album' moment to me.

Not terrible, but easily in my bottom third of the album, and a very misguided single choice. Thank God she bounced back!
 
26. Night of the Swallow (from The Dreaming)


Kate goes :ireland: in this nice little FOLKY piece. In fact, it was only released in Ireland, although there was no promotion whatsoever. This Irish theme seemed to continue with a few of her other songs, including Jig of Life and Rocket Man.

Average score: 7.125
Highest score: 11 (COB)
Lowest score: 0 (funky, Ag)
 
Her family has Irish roots if I remember correctly. This is one of my favourite songs of hers, not just because of the CELT theme but also because she does that sort of LADY MACBETH thing very well.

I WON'T LET YOU DO IT I WON'T LET YOU DO IT I WON'T LET YOU GO THROUGH WITH IT :bad:
 
I know it's a song about SMUGGLERS/RELATIONSHIPS whatever but she does sound quite WITCHY in the chorus :disco:
 
Oh I love this! The chorus takes SO MANY twists and turns melodically whilst still maintaining a frantic momentum, and never descending into RANDOM WARBLING (Hi Utopia!)
 
25. Wild Man (from 50 Words For Snow)


The lead single from her last studio album in 2011, this had a modest impact on the charts. It tells the story of YETI SIGHTINGS and was included in the compilation album The Art of Peace - Songs for Tibet II, which was devoted to the 80th birthday of the fourteenth Dalai Lama! :D:disco:

Average score: 7.1875
Highest score: 10 (wurst)
Lowest score: 0 (Ag)
 
Frosty the Snoldi said:
26. Night of the Swallow (from The Dreaming)


Kate goes :ireland: in this nice little FOLKY piece. In fact, it was only released in Ireland, although there was no promotion whatsoever. This Irish theme seemed to continue with a few of her other songs, including Jig of Life and Rocket Man.

Average score: 7.125
Highest score: 11 (COB)
Lowest score: 0 (funky, Ag)
Click to expand...


One of Kate's best songs, but the low placing is her own fault for only releasing it as a single in Ireland.

This is her storytelling at its best and the tune is gorgeous, mixed as it is with the characters' frantic and frenetic desperation.

One tidbit is that she wanted to get her voice sounding quite THROATY at the beginning of the song to mimic the noise of a swallow and she drank lots of milk to coat her throat and produce that noise.
 
Frosty the Snoldi said:
25. Wild Man (from 50 Words For Snow)


The lead single from her last studio album in 2011, this had a modest impact on the charts. It tells the story of YETI SIGHTINGS and was included in the compilation album The Art of Peace - Songs for Tibet II, which was devoted to the 80th birthday of the fourteenth Dalai Lama! :D:disco:

Average score: 7.1875
Highest score: 10 (wurst)
Lowest score: 0 (Ag)
Click to expand...


I've always liked Wild Man and it's an interesting idea. To elaborate a bit more on what the song is about, it is about yeti sightings, but specifically a group of people who want to hunt down and kill the yeti, which represents narrow-minded people wanting to shoot down what they don't understand (similar theme to Leave It Open).

Kate's character is trying to help the yeti, finding his footprints and brushing them away so the hunters don't find him. She forces you to empathiae with this yeti - "They want to know you. They will hunt you down. Then they will kill you. Run away run away, *whispered* run away...."
 
My criticism of Wild Man is that she clearly did her research by reading the Yeti article on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says: "On 25 July 2008, the BBC reported that hairs collected in the remote Garo Hills area of North-East India by Dipu Marak had been analysed at Oxford Brookes University in the UK"

The lyric in the chorus of Wild Man is: "In the remote Garo Hills by Dipu Marak
We found footprints in the snow"

Dipu Marak is a person who collected the hairs, not an area. So lazy research and she misread the sentence on Wikipedia.
 
Still agog that Them heavy people (Rolling the ball) has been cruelly ignored, despite its single-worthy entry at #10
 
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