- Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)
- Hounds Of Love
- The Big Sky
- Mother Stands For Comfort
- Cloudbusting
- The Ninth Wave:
- And Dream Of Sheep
- Under Ice
- Waking The Witch
- Watching You Without Me
- Jig Of Life
- Hello Earth
- The Morning Fog
The Triumph of Imagination
When Hounds of Love arrived in 1985, it didn’t simply reaffirm Kate Bush’s genius - it redefined the very possibilities of what popular music could express. In an era dominated by polished synths and predictable formulas, Bush created an album that was vast, fearless, and wholly her own. It was art-pop as alchemy - where intellect met instinct, myth met machinery, and emotion burst through the boundaries of form.
What makes Hounds of Love extraordinary is its dual nature. On one level, it is immediate and human - a meditation on love, fear, and survival. On another, it’s a grand experiment in sound and storytelling, a tapestry woven from dreams, literature, and cinematic texture. Bush, in full command of the Fairlight sampler and her own boundless curiosity, turned technology into emotion. Each sound seems hand-carved, as if she were composing not just music but the atmosphere of a living world.
Her voice - ever mercurial - becomes the album’s heartbeat. It pleads, howls, soars, and whispers, embodying characters and spirits with theatrical conviction yet never losing its humanity. Bush’s gift lies in her ability to merge the mystical and the intimate: she writes songs that feel ancient and futuristic all at once, speaking to the deepest corners of the subconscious.
Hounds of Love is ultimately an album about facing what terrifies us - the pursuit, the drowning, the awakening - and finding freedom in the act of surrender. It celebrates vulnerability as strength and imagination as survival.
Decades later, it remains a singular achievement: neither pop nor avant-garde, but something rarer - a work of emotional architecture, meticulously built yet wildly alive. In Hounds of Love, Kate Bush chased her own visions into the dark and emerged with light cupped in her hands. Few albums have ever dared to dream so vividly - or invited us to dream alongside them.
=====
My personal view:
This is the album where everything came together. What can I say? It has been my favourite pop/rock album for over 40 years now, every single song is brilliant, from the hits (great videos to boot by the way) to the amazing suite The Ninth Wave, which covers the B-side of the LP album. The remastered CD with bonuses is even better because you get the original song The Big Sky (amazing, but still the least impressive track on the album) in a phenomenal remix to enjoy this album even more. It is considered by many fans and music critics to be her best album, and has been regularly voted one of the greatest albums of all time.