Hounds of Love

Kate Bush built a recording studio inside a farmhouse in Kent and spent nearly two years making this album in total privacy, producing it entirely herself. The result is unlike anything else in pop music. Side one is five songs that hit like a series of revelations: "Running Up That Hill," "The Big Sky," "Cloudbusting," the title track, and "Mother Stands for Comfort," each one dense with synths, orchestral arrangements, and a voice that can be playful and devastating in the same bar. Side two is something else entirely.

"Running Up That Hill" was originally called "A Deal with God," a song about a man and woman trading souls with each other for a day so they could understand each other completely. Kate's label made her change the title over fears about radio airplay. The song reached number three in the UK in 1985 and, when it appeared in Stranger Things in 2022, hit number one globally, introducing Bush to a generation born after the original release. It deserves every second of that attention. The Fairlight CMI synthesizer she used throughout the record had become her primary compositional tool, and the sounds it produces are unlike anything generated by conventional instruments, bright and metallic and somehow organic all at once.

The second half of the album, called The Ninth Wave, is a seven-part suite about a woman adrift and alone in the ocean at night, drifting between waking and sleep, between the present and visions of her past and future. It is genuinely cinematic, layered with sea sounds, traditional Irish instruments, and choral voices. The two halves of this record form completely different emotional worlds and both are masterpieces. This is the album that proved pop music had no ceiling.