7. Kate BushHounds Of Love
This was the first Kate Bush album I actually bothered to listen to. I remember my mum listening to her, but I didn’t pay attention because I was listening to hardcore and jungle. It’s a brilliant pop album and, musically and lyrically, she’s taking loads of insane risks, doing stuff that’s really creative and genuinely experimental.
This touches on genius, for me, and the clever thing is she’s made music that has such a broad scope and appeal but is also very inventive. She’s trying genuinely new things out – the synthesizers she used were virtually brand new – and made them accessible and palatable without having to water down what she’s doing. Even the B-side, with its bizarre little stories and where the tracks run into each other, was quite a bold thing to do for a mainstream pop album. It’s near perfect.
