FREE VERSE: Kate Bush Worked It

It’s mighty difficult to find a positive female role-model that passes my standards. Those standards don’t necessarily include shameless exposure of miles of cleavage, and they rarely entail any affiliation with the White House. One woman who does strike me as someone worth looking up to is Kate Bush.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Bush had a type of charismatic originality likened to David Bowie or David Byrne. She created a body of work that is iconic, influential, and moving, and did so with an incredible amount of hard work and passion.

One of Bush’s most popular tracks, “Wuthering Heights,” was featured on her first album, The Kick Inside. “Heathcliff, it’s me— Cathy./Come home. I’m so cold!/ Let me into your window,” she sings in a high-pitched, commanding voice that is so very Kate Bush and so unlike any other singer.

By the time she was 15, Bush had written over 100 songs.

The creativity that dominates the track is astounding, especially when considering that Bush wrote the song when she was 17. In fact, by the time she was 15, Bush had written over 100 songs, all of which showed incredible imagination.

Not only did she write her own songs and sing them in her perfect voice, but she learned to heighten her stage presence through dance. She took this dancing seriously, learning diligently from the famously-liberal English dancer, Lindsay Kemp.

Bush also worked incredibly hard to get her perfect voice to be just that. She described in interviews practicing her vocals daily until she had cultivated a style of singing that was not only her own, but was on-pitch and in her complete control.

Bush also produced my favorite album of her discography, The Dreaming, herself. For the following album, Hounds Of Love, she had her own studio built. She took control of her craft and worked at it until it was what she wanted.

Bush’s incredible hard work and determination paid off in the form of her beautiful craft. I hope that millennials can remember that type of role-model.

—Mariah Taylor