Kate Bush - Musical Style

Musical Style

Bush is a soprano with a range going from B2 (sung in the 2012 version of "Running Up That Hill") to D7 (screamed in "The Big Sky"). Her music is eclectic, varying styles even within an album. Her songs span genres as diverse as rock, pop, alternative and art rock. Even in her earliest works where the piano was a primary instrument, she wove together many diverse influences, melding classical music, rock, and a wide range of ethnic and folk sources, and this has continued throughout her career.

In an interview with Melody Maker magazine in 1977, she revealed that male artists had more influence on her work than females, stating: "Every female you see at a piano is either Lynsey de Paul, or Carole King. And most male music—not all of it but the good stuff—really lays it on you. It really puts you against the wall and that's what I like to do. I'd like my music to intrude. Not many females succeed with that."

The experimental nature of her music has led it to be described as a later, more technological, and more accessible manifestation of the British progressive rock movement. Southern England was the home to the most influential and successful acts of the progressive rock movement and, like other artists in this genre, Bush rejects the classic American style of making pop music, which was adopted by most UK pop artists. Bush's vocals contain elements of British, Anglo-Irish and most prominently (southern) English accents and, in its utilisation of musical instruments from many periods and cultures, her music has differed from American pop norms. Elements of Bush's lyrics tend to be more unusual and less clichéd than American-style pop lyrics, often employing historical or literary references and avoiding autobiographical lyrics. She considers herself a storyteller who embodies the character singing the song and strenuously rejects efforts by others to insist that her songs are autobiographical.

Reviewers have used the term "surreal" to describe her music. Many of her songs have a melodramatic emotional and musical surrealism that defies easy categorisation. It has been observed that even the more joyous pieces are often tinged with traces of melancholy, and even the most sorrowful pieces have elements of vitality struggling against all that would oppress them.

Her lyrics have referenced a wide array of subject matter, often relatively obscure, as in G. I. Gurdjieff in the song "Them Heavy People", while "Deeper Understanding", from The Sensual World, portrays a person who stays indoors, obsessively talking to a computer and shunning human contact. "Cloudbusting" was inspired by Peter Reich's autobiography, "Book of Dreams", about his relationship with his father, Wilhelm Reich. In a retrospective review of "Cloudbusting", Allmusic journalist Amy Hanson praised the song for "the rich earth of imagery that Bush has tilled throughout her entire career, emerging both tender and brutal." Commending the song for having "a thoughtful lyric and a compulsive cello-driven melody", Hanson wrote: "Even more startling, but hardly surprising, is the ease with which Bush was able to capture the moment when a child first realizes that adults are fallible and the parental cocoon is tenuous at best."

Comedy is also a big influence on her and is a significant component of her work. She has cited Woody Allen, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and The Young Ones as particular favourites. Horror movies are another interest of Bush's and have influenced the gothic nature of several of her songs, such as "Hounds of Love", inspired by the 1957 horror movie Night of the Demon. Her songs have occasionally combined comedy and horror to form dark humour, such as murder by poisoning in "Coffee Homeground", an alcoholic mother in "Ran Tan Waltz" and the upbeat "The Wedding List", a song inspired by François Truffaut's 1967 film of Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black about the death of a groom and the bride's subsequent revenge against the killer.