History Music / Aerial

''Aerial'', released in 2005, is the eighth studio album by English art pop musician Music/KateBush. Released twelve years after ''Music/{{The Red Shoes|Album}}'', the album's release was the culmination of nine years of on-and-off production. During that time, she started devoting herself more to looking after her family and especially her first son, Albert "Bertie" [=McIntosh=], born in 1998 (his father, Bandit guitarist Dan [=McIntosh=], had previously been a session musician on ''The Red Shoes''). Having previously shunned the idea of motherhood, raising Bertie provided a new sense of creative vigor for Bush, who featured him as a guest vocalist on the album and dedicated an eponymous track to him.

''Aerial'', released in 2005, is the eighth studio album by English art pop musician Music/KateBush. Released twelve years after ''The Red Shoes'', the album's release was the culmination of nine years of on-and-off production. During that time, she started devoting herself more to looking after her family and especially her first son, Albert "Bertie" [=McIntosh=], born in 1998 (his father, Bandit guitarist Dan [=McIntosh=], had previously been a session musician on ''The Red Shoes''). Having previously shunned the idea of motherhood, raising Bertie provided a new sense of creative vigor for Bush, who featured him as a guest vocalist on the album and dedicated an eponymous track to him.

* NumberObsession: "?" is about a man who has "an obsessive nature and deep fascination for numbers," in particular seeking to memorize as many digits of the titular value as possible.

** Prolific composer and longtime Bush collaborator Michael Kamen provides string arrangements, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, throughout the album; it would be one of his final projects before his death in 2003.

* EpicRocking: "π", "A Coral Room", "Nocturn", and "Aerial" all surpass the six-minute mark; both "Mrs. Bartolozzi" and "Sunset" just barely fall short. Then there's the 2018 remaster, where the entire second disc is sequenced as one 42-minute track.

** "King of the Mountain" ponders whether or not Music/ElvisPresley is "in the snow with Rosebud," nodding back to the backstory of the title character in ''Film/CitizenKane'' and the twist that named the ItWasHisSled trope. The final shot of the music video is even replicates that of ''Citizen Kane'', being a close-up of a snow-covered Rosebud in Elvis' abandoned mansion. [[invoked]]

-->'''2005 version:''' Yes, I need to get that tone a little bit lighter there, maybe with some dark accents coming in from the side. Hmm... that's good.\\

!!!A Sky of Honey[[note]]retitled "An Endless Sky of Honey" and sequenced as a single 42:00 track on the 2018 remaster[[/note]]

* SiameseTwinSongs: All the tracks on ''A Sky of Honey'' are designed to flow into one another, to the extent where the 2018 remaster sequences them all as a single 42-minute track, titled "An Endless Sky of Honey".

* AccidentalArt: "The Painter's Link" sees the title character's painting unintentionally transform into a beautiful sunset when it gets caught in a rainstorm

** The DistinctDoubleAlbum approach here mirrors that of ''Music/HoundsOfLove'' two decades prior: collection of unrelated tracks on the first half, unified suite on the second.

''Aerial'' is the first (and, to date, only) double album in Bush's studio discography. Following in the footsteps of her 1985 megahit ''Music/HoundsOfLove'', it is a DistinctDoubleAlbum that combines a collection of unrelated songs on the first disc, ''A Sea of Honey'', and a unified suite on the second, ''A Sky of Honey''. The former centers around introspective ruminations on topics such as love, family, life, death, and the legacy of stardom, while the latter details a series of events that the suite's narrator both witnesses and takes part in over the course of a single 24-hour period.

* DistinctDoubleAlbum: Taking after the Distinct Single Album approach of ''Music/HoundsOfLove'', the first disc, ''A Sea of Honey'', is a collection of unrelated songs like a traditional pop album, while the second, ''A Sky of Honey'', is a RockOpera about the events of a single 24-hour period.

* BriefAccentImitation: "King of the Mountain" sees Bush adopt a slurred, swinging delivery style that mimics Elvis' singing voice in the waning years of his life, tying in with the lyrics ruminating on his life and legacy.

* ElvisLives: The general subject of "King of the Mountain", in which the narrator wonders whether or not Elvis faked his death to get away from the increasingly suffocating pressures of fame. This is accentuated by the music video, which includes {{Spinning Paper}}s listing bizarre places where Elvis was supposedly spotted.

** "King of the Mountain" ponders whether or not Music/ElvisPresley is "in the snow with Rosebud," nodding back to the backstory of the title character in ''Film/CitizenKane'' and the twist that named the ItWasHisSled trope. [[invoked]]

* SpinningPaper: Instances of this appear throughout the video for "King of the Mountain", listing various ElvisLives claims such as "Sightings of Elvis in Yeti Colony".

# "How to be Invisible" (5:32)

* LonelyPianoPiece: "Mrs. Bartolozzi" is carried mostly by Bush alone at a piano, with its lyrics and delivery reflecting a sense of weariness and ennui.

** A reproduction of James Southall's "Fishermen" appears in the liner notes between ''A Sea of Honey'' and ''A Sky of Honey'', mirrored horizontally and edited to add "AERIAL" onto the boat.

* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: "Bertie" details the renewed sense of joy that Bush found after the birth of her son, who serves as the song's namesake.

* ElvisLives: The general subject of "King of the Mountain", in which the narrator wonders whether or not Elvis faked his death to get away from the increasingly suffocating pressures of fame.
* EpicRocking: "π", "A Coral Room", "Nocturn", and "Aerial" all surpass the six-minute mark; both "Mrs. Bartolozzi" and "Sunset" just barely fall short.