Genre
Art pop, baroque pop, and progressive rock. An extraordinary debut of precocious originality, the album's thirteen songs - all written by Bush, some when she was thirteen years old - range from piano balladry and Celtic folk to hard rock and proto-new wave, unified by Bush's three-and-a-half-octave voice and a lyrical intelligence.
Release
Released on February 17, 1978, by EMI Records.
Production
Produced and arranged by Andrew Powell. The primary session musicians were Ian Bairnson on guitar, David Paton on bass, Stuart Elliott on drums, and Duncan Mackay on keyboards — all associated with the Alan Parsons Project. Paddy Bush contributed mandolin; Morris Pert played percussion. Recorded at AIR Studios, London.
Reception
The album reached No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart, was certified Platinum by the BPI, and became the ninth best-selling LP in the United Kingdom in 1978. The lead single "Wuthering Heights" reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, making Bush the first female artist to top the UK chart with a self-composed song. In Stylus Magazine, Marcello Carlin wrote that the album "probably kicked down more doors than the whole of the first and second waves of punk combined." Rolling Stone ranked it No. 82 on its 2023 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Kate Bush
Catherine "Kate" Bush (born July 30, 1958, Bexleyheath, Kent) is an English singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer, one of the most singular and influential artists in the history of British popular music. She began writing songs at eleven and was signed by EMI at sixteen through David Gilmour's advocacy. The Kick Inside was followed by seven further studio albums - among them The Dreaming (1982), Hounds of Love (1985), and Aerial (2005) - each extending her musical vocabulary in directions no other artist had explored. In 2014 she became the first female artist to hold simultaneous UK and US top-10 live album entries. Her 35-date Before the Dawn residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2014 sold out within minutes of release; when "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" reached number one on the UK Singles Chart in 2022 following its use in Stranger Things, she became the oldest female artist in history to achieve that distinction. She was appointed CBE in 2013 and made a Dame in 2023.
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