Quote of the Day

Without really meaning to, Kate Bush has stood for many things. She has stood for English pop as a discrete idiom, sheared free of its American roots. She has stood firmly for artistic independence in the face of corporate will, by standing up to record-company bosses and by forming her own management and publishing companies at an age most of us are prepared to swallow whatever trickles down. She has stood for privacy in the face of presumption by the media. She has stood, fiercely, against the sexual objectification of women as an industrial norm. She has maintained the conviction that one's first duty is to one's own artistic muse, and she has done it as if it were all in a day's work and not a continuation of her work by other, self-dramatizing, means.

. . . It's quite hard now to recall with any sort of completeness the context of her advent in 1978, at the height of disco and punk and at the tail end of the English art-rock sensibility, which favored style, performance and smart ideas over the American pop verities of personal authenticity, songwriting and musical discipline. She didn't, at the time, come off like the illegitimate daughter of Bowie, Roxy and the Sensational Alex Harvey, any more than she fit the herky-jerky street-art model proposed by the incipient New Wave. She was way too literary, polished and home-bound for that, and she was waywardly, Romantically stubborn, like a devoted Noel Streatfeild heroine: overtly middle class, when "middle class" were two dirty words. She was always an outlier.

– Nick Coleman
Quoted in "The Inimitable Kate Bush"
The Independent
August 17, 2014

Kate Bush's series of 'Before the Dawn' concerts will take place from August 26, 2014 at the Eventim Apollo, London.

To listen to "Misty," a track from Kate's latest album, 2011's 50 Words for Snow, click here.

Related Off-site Links and Updates:
My Hero: Kate Bush – Jeanette Winterson (The Guardian, August 22, 2014).
An Encore 35 Years in the Making: Kate Bush Fans Travel to See Rare Concerts in London – Melena Ryzik (The New York Times, August 22, 2014).
Famous Fans Explain What Makes Kate Bush So Brilliant – Vicky Carroll (The Big Issue, August 22, 2014).
Kate Bush: 'Before the Dawn' Signals a New Era for Pop's Enduring Enigma – Graeme Thomson (The Guardian, August 22, 2014).
Will Kate Bush's Comeback Sink or Swim? – Alison Boshoff (The Daily Mail, August 21, 2014).
Kate Bush, the Queen of Art-Pop Who Defied Her Critics – Simon Reynolds (The Guardian, August 21, 2014).
Kate Bush: What Might We Expect from Her New Stage Show? – Helen Brown (The Telegraph, August 20, 2014).
Kate Bush Makes a Valiant Stand in the Battle of Transcendence v Smartphones – John Harris (The Guardian, August 20, 2014).
Kate Bush Asks Fans Not to Use Phones or Tablets at London Comeback Gigs – Hannah Ellis-Petersen (The Guardian, August 19, 2014).
Kate Bush Concert Tickets Sell Out in 15 Minutes – BBC News (March 28, 2014).
Kate Bush Receives CBE from the Queen – Rebecca English (Daily Mail, April 10, 2013).
Why We Should All Love Kate Bush – Laura Barnett (The Telegraph, March 14, 2011).
Kate Bush News and Information
The Official Kate Bush Website
Kate Bush's Official YouTube Channel

For more of Kate Bush at The Wild Reed, see:
• Wow!
• Scaling the Heights
• "Oh, Yeah!"
• Celebrating Bloomsday in St. Paul (& with Kate Bush)
• "Rosabelle, Believe . . ."
• Just in Time for Winter
• "Call Upon Those You Love"
• A Song of Summer

Image: Kate Bush (1993) by Guido Harari (from the recently-released book Kate Bush – Photographs by Guido Harari.