Music / The Kick Inside

"Let me grab your soul away!"

The Kick Inside, released in 1978 through EMI in the UK and Harvest Records in the US, is the debut studio album by English art pop musician Kate Bush. Having been recruited by EMI at the behest of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, who discovered and took a liking to one of her demo recordings, the album marks the culmination of both a three-year-long effort to bring the child prodigy's work to store shelves and a childhood passion for music and songwriting that started when Bush was just eleven. During the leadup to the album's production and release, Bush took a liking to interpretive dance and its ability to convey stories in ways that music alone was unable to, using her experiences with her dance teacher Lindsey Kemp as a source of inspiration in addition to literary and film influences that had already permeated her amateur songwriting for years. Combined with the Baroque Pop sound that she had crafted in both her early work and on this record, The Kick Inside brought forth a unique take on Progressive Rock that would quickly turn Bush into a leading figure in the art pop scene, with her only further innovating on it with her following albums.

While Executive Meddling did succeed in getting Bush to use experienced session musicians for the album in place of the KT Bush Band that she had been performing with for around a year, Bush did manage to have her way with the album's debut single, spurning EMI's choice of "James and the Cold Gun" in favor of "Wuthering Heights". The decision paid off tremendously: released only a month in advance of the album as its lead single, it ended up becoming the very first self-penned song by a female artist to top the UK Singles chart, remaining there for four consecutive weeks and being certified platinum in New Zealand and gold in the UK & Australia.

Off the heels of the single's commercial success, the album topped the charts in the Netherlands and Portugal, and peaked at No. 3 on the UK Albums chart, going on to become the 9th best-selling album of 1978 in the United Kingdom. The album would later be certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Guinness World Records would later recognize this success as making Bush the first female artist in popular music history to write every song on a million-selling debut album. In the US and Canada, meanwhile, the album hugely underperformed despite "The Man in the Child in His Eyes" reaching No. 85 on the Billboard Hot 100, missing the Billboard 200 and Canadian Albums Chart entirely, failing to meet any certifications in the US, and giving EMI cold feet on releasing Bush's next two albums Stateside. While EMI America did release Lionheart stateside, they only repressed it more widely and issued Never for Ever stateside after The Dreaming established a toehold in the country. Despite her lack of stateside success, her videos for "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" and "Wuthering Heights" were among the first to be aired on MTV when the channel launched in 1981. The channel's airing of her videos would help establish a cult following stateside through the decade.

The Kick Inside was supported by five singles: "Wuthering Heights", "Moving", "Them Heavy People", "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", and "Strange Phenomena".

Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Moving" (3:01)
2. "The Saxophone Song" (3:51)
3. "Strange Phenomena" (2:57)
4. "Kite" (2:56)
5. "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" (2:39)
6. "Wuthering Heights" (4:28)

Side Two

1. "James and the Cold Gun" (3:34)
2. "Feel It" (3:02)
3. "Oh to Be in Love" (3:18)
4. "L'Amour Looks Something Like You" (2:27)
5. "Them Heavy People" (3:04)
6. "Room for the Life" (4:03)
7. "The Kick Inside" (3:30)

They're only lonely for the life that they troped with their old friend:

• Alternate Album Cover: Seven different cover photos exist for this album, mostly based on which region the album was released in:
  • The first and best-known one (as seen above), featured on the original UK release in 1978 and on the 40th-anniversary remaster in all regions, features Bush in an elaborate red dress riding a large kite against a backdrop of a large yellow-orange eye, framed in burgundy. Following the dissolution of EMI and the transfer of Bush's backlog to her label, Fish People, this cover would be used for all regions, most prominently on the 2018 remaster.
  • The second cover◊, used for the original American and Canadian release of the album on Harvest Records, is also a glamour photo of Bush, running her hands through her hair.
  • The third cover◊, included on the second edition of the Canadian and American releases (the latter on EMI America Records and later EMI Manhattan Records), features a glamour photo of Bush sitting in a wooden box, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans.
  • The fourth cover◊, used for the Japanese release, is a different glamour shot of Bush in a pink tank top.
  • The fifth cover◊, used for the Yugoslavian release of the album, is a photograph of Bush in a white dress, staring sternly into the distance.
  • The sixth cover◊, used for the Uruguayan release, is a black-and-white headshot of Bush staring directly into the camera.
  • The seventh cover◊, used for a Swedish cassette reissue in 1988, is another photo of Bush in a white dress, but dancing.
• Book Ends: The whale song that appears at the beginning of "Moving" appears again as it fades into "The Saxophone Song".
• Brother–Sister Incest: "The Kick Inside" examines the fallout of an incestuous relationship between the narrator and her brother, which results in the narrator planning to kill herself after realizing that her brother got her pregnant.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The Title Track is adapted from the Anglo-Scottish folk ballad "Lizie Wan", about a woman whose brother impregnates her during an incestuous tryst. In the original song, Lizie is killed by her brother, while in Bush's version, she commits suicide.
• Driven to Suicide: The Title Track is, for all intents and purposes, a suicide note written by the narrator after finding out that her incestuous relationship with her brother resulted in her getting pregnant.
• Downer Ending: The album closes out with a suicide note from a woman who was impregnated by her brother after an incestuous relationship. Bush's singing on the album is appropriately filled with the right amount of anguish to invoke the narrator's irreconcilable regret towards her actions.
• Easter Egg: Certain copies of the original UK LP feature the message "REMEMBER YOURSELF" etched into the runout groove of Side One.
• Ethereal White Dress: The UK video for "Wuthering Heights" has Kate wearing a white dress in a smoke-filled room reflecting how the song is based on the part of the novel where Cathy's ghost is haunting Heathcliffe.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  • "The Saxophone Song" is a song about a saxophone... well, a saxophone player, but still. The lengthy sax solos in the song also don't come as much of a surprise.
  • "Kite" heavily invokes kite imagery as a metaphor for the narrator's desires.
  • Likewise, "Wuthering Heights" is a song adapted from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.
• Face on the Cover: Regardless of which version of the album cover you're looking at (and there's seven of them), every one features a photograph of Bush herself.
• Fading into the Next Song: The outro of "Moving" segues directly into "The Saxophone Song".
• Gaussian Girl: Used throughout the video for "The Man with the Child in His Eyes".
• Genre Mashup: A mix of Baroque Pop and Progressive Rock, defining the template that Bush would further build upon in her later work in a variety of permutations, from the percussive aggression of The Dreaming to the ethereal ruminations of The Sensual World to everything outside and in-between. This mix of genres would also become a cornerstone in the development of art pop as a whole over the following decades, with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, and David Byrne owing a great deal to Bush in hindsight.
• Iconic Outfit: The red dress worn in the video for "Wuthering Heights" has since become a visual staple of Bush's work.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: Invoked in the chorus of "Wuthering Heights", sung from the point of view Catherine Earnshaw's ghost.
• Imperial China: The UK cover art, pictured above, is noticeably influenced by classical Chinese art and aesthetics.
• Intercourse with You: "Feel It" is an ode to the interplay between love and lust; the fact that it was sung by a 19-year-old Bush can make it a bit more awkward than usual to discuss.
• In the Style of: Word of God states that "Kite" is meant to be a Bob Marley pastiche.
• Large Ham: Bush tends to sing throughout this album with quite a bit of gusto, and it only continues on her later album.
• Lonely Piano Piece: The Title Track features minimal instrumentation, focusing primarily on Bush at a piano, tying in with the melancholy tone of the lyrics, in which the narrator commits suicide after an incestuous relationship with her brother results in her pregnancy.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: "Kite" is narrated by one, encouraging the listener to join her in her pursuit of spiritual freedom.
• The Not-Remix: For the 1986 Greatest Hits Album The Whole Story, Bush re-recorded "Wuthering Heights" (emphasizing her Vocal Evolution since 1978 as a result) and added gated reverb to the backing track. Fans tend to prefer the original.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: "Moving" was based on Bush's experiences with her interpretive dance teacher, Lindsey Kemp, who Bush provides a credit on the album for.
• Record Producer: Andrew Powell and David Gilmour; the former would also produce Lionheart later that year.
• Sampling: The whale songs that bookend "Moving" are taken from "Slowed Down Solo Whale" off of Songs of the Humpback Whale.
• Sexy Packaging: The second American release of the album featured a photo of Bush posing like a fashion model, largely for fanservice appeal.
• Shout-Out:
  • "Wuthering Heights" is an obvious one to the novel of the same name.
  • The phrase, "big brass bed", in "James and the Cold Gun" is lifted from Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay".
• Sibling Team: Bush's brother Paddy provides mandolin on "Oh to Be in Love" and backing vocals on "Them Heavy People".
• The Something Song: "The Saxophone Song."
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Three guesses as to what the song called "Wuthering Heights" is about.
  • The Title Track takes after the folk ballad "Lizie Wan".

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