Album Anniversaries: 40 Years Later, Kate Bush’s ‘The Dreaming’ Remains Weird and Wonderful
She may be known for “Running Up That Hill,” but Kate Bush has made stranger things than her viral hit.
Written by Audrey Vieira
Photo courtesy of Peter Mazel
Society is in the midst of a Kate Bush renaissance. Her 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” played a prominent role in the latest season of a certain Netflix original series, introducing her work to a legion of younger listeners who now know an excellent pop song about love, longing, and the desire to understand another perspective. Bush was by no means unknown prior to this recent resurgence in popularity — Hounds of Love, the album that features “Running Up That Hill,” was certified double platinum in her native U.K. nearly 36 years ago. But now, the Netflix needledrop is propelling the already-acclaimed song to new heights.
However, Bush has recorded stranger things over the course of her career — one of her weirdest and most wonderful works being 1982’s The Dreaming, her first entirely self-produced album. While not as critically or commercially successful as its successor, Hounds of Love, Bush’s experimentation on this album paved the way for uncommercial influences in pop music, including some more positively received releases from other artists today.
By 1982 standards, The Dreaming is sometimes a bizarre listen. After all, this is the album that ends with Bush braying like a donkey on closer “Get Out Of My House,” her voice becoming more animalistic with each borderline feral “hee-haw.” But in the context of the album, her transformation makes sense. Bush doesn’t begin with a sharp left turn into the uncanny valley. She begins with “Sat In Your Lap,” a relatively radio-friendly single satirizing those who yearn for knowledge yet refuse to seek it. Punctuated by catchy “oohs!” and triumphant horns, Bush’s frenetic production reflects the success that the song’s unambitious narrator is only willing to dream about. The track is fast-paced but never overwhelming, making it an excellent invitation into the more experimental elements ahead.
Many of these elements are the result of Bush’s experimentation with the Fairlight CMI, a powerful synthesizer which revolutionized sampling with its release in 1979. It was a controversial instrument at the time; the Musician’s Union even feared it would cause real-life instrumentalists to lose job opportunities. However, Bush chose to embrace the Fairlight’s potential production capabilities, rather than fear it. The Dreaming is neither her first nor last time using the synthesizer — she previously used it to sample the sounds of broken glass on her 1980 single “Babooshka,” and more famously produced Hounds of Love with it — but it is one of the best demonstrations of how Bush’s production conveys both the beautiful and the bizarre with ease.
Image courtesy of EMI Records
That being said, The Dreaming’s most beautiful moments do not exist in spite of the bizarre. Instead, they happen because of it. Bush didn’t have to make those donkey noises at the end of “Get Out Of My House.” She could have sampled the brays of real donkeys with the Fairlight if she wanted to, but she had other plans. Bush is as much of an actress as she is a musician. Her commitment to her roles extends to even the most minute details, and with “Get Out Of My House,” that means becoming the donkey by braying into that microphone.
There are other tracks on the album in which Bush alters her voice. On “Leave It Open,” her vocals are lifted by airy vocoders and occasionally pitched up in a style not unlike something one might find on a Spotify hyperpop playlist. However, Bush altering her voice is not always the work of a synthesizer or production tricks. The singles “There Goes A Tenner” and “The Dreaming” respectively see the singer put on Cockney and Australian accents to establish the voices of her characters. On the album’s penultimate track, “Houdini,” which imagines the late Harry Houdini’s wife attempting to contact his spirit, Bush sings with a harsh, haunting scream; her voice so full of desperation that one would think she knew him in a past life. The artist’s stylistic choices on the album may sound unnatural at times, but her raw vocals and commitment to her concepts evoke emotions all too familiar, even in the wildest moments.
There is catharsis within the chaos of The Dreaming, especially when Bush is at her most experimental on tracks like “Leave It Open” and “Get Out Of My House.” The latter’s chaotic donkey vocals are even foreshadowed on the former, featured in the background before Bush urges listeners to “let the weirdness in.” Thankfully, this command has not been lost on many modern artists. Bush indeed left the door open for more unconventional pop music, from the literal barking madness of 100 Gecs to the dolphin noises that close out Fiona Apple’s “I Want You To Love Me.” Sampling may have been uncommon and even feared when The Dreaming first dropped in 1982, but recent releases like Beyonce’s RENAISSANCE and Charli XCX’s CRASH now embrace the practice with incredibly catchy results. As unconventional as The Dreaming was at the time of its release, it is ahead of its time in terms of the experimental pop it inspires today, and the album remains an excellent introduction for anyone who wants to hear Bush at her best and most chaotic.