The Whole Story

by

Kate Bush

Edit

With five albums under her belt from EMI Records, it was time for Kate to put out a greatest hits. She'd made it big with Hounds Of Love, which spawned four hit singles, and The Whole Story brings her EMI songs to closure. And it was this album that introduced me to Kate Bush, and the rest is history. Key, []=original studio album.

The version of "Wuthering Heights" features a newer vocal, which is more developed than the girlish vocals of the Kick Inside days and helps the piano and drums of this song. Yes, she does sing about the longing about Kathy towards Heathcliff. Much better than the original.

"Cloudbusting" is my favorite single from here, especially with its martial rhythm set by the strings and synthesizers. The song and the video are related, as it's sung from the POV of the daughter of an inventor who creates a rainmaking machine that gets the government after the inventor, considered a threat to the men in power. [Hounds Of Love]

"Breathing" is one of Kate's most serious pieces, about the effects that radioactive fallout has on a baby still in the womb, and it's sung from the perspective of the infant. The addition of a cold official sounding voice reporting the results of fallout from a nuclear test and the crescendo that rises with the "What are we going to do, we are all going to die refrain" shows that Kate is an artist with political conscience. [Never For Ever]

One of Kate's best realized pieces is the piano ballad "The Man With The Child In His Eyes" on a man who is most surely her Prince Charming, [The Kick Inside]

The dreamy "Wow" about the travails of fame and show business [Lionheart] is followed by two songs from Hounds Of Love, the frantic title track, and "Running Up That Hill", where she is ready to make a deal with God and trade places. There's some weird background vocals towards the end.

The sombre guitar ballad "Army Dreamers" tells the story of a serviceman in the B.F.P.O. who's been killed and the opportunities he never had, such as a proper education, the ability to play a guitar, or getting married and having a child. "What a waste, army dreamers" Kate laments.

The upbeat weirdness of "Sat In Your Lap" tells the story of someone who wants to be an intellectual, scholar, full of knowledge, but can't be bothered to learn and just wants it set in her lap, i.e. "just gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme."

"Experiment IV" the new song, is about some people asked by the military to create a "sound that could kill someone from a distance," instead of "music made for pleasure, music made to flow." And the regrets of the inventors for making such a weapon is felt in the lyrics. The sound neatly fits in the Hounds Of Love era.

"The Dreaming" featuring a didgeridoo, and Kate's slight Australian twang, tells how the aborigines and the natural habitat are being exploited by the mining companies, with the aborigines being driven to drink and even kangaroos being hit by vehicles. [The Dreaming]

Finally, "Babooshka" is about a woman who tests her husband's fidelity by writing him anonymous letters, disguising herself as a younger version of herself, and seeing if he'll go through with an adulterous affair with his own wife. The piano is struck forcefully during the verses, before the electric guitar riffs kick in the prechorus and chorus. [Never For Ever]

Kate's greatest hits does not tell the "whole story", as she had two more albums and a record deal with Sony, but it tells the best stories of the recording chapters of her career, as they were the most experimentally creative and lyrically enriching.

I first bought this album on vinyl, later again on cassette, and finally on CD - It was my introduction to this artist's very distinctive music, and the selection of tracks, given the original LP format and time frame of covered work, is a worthy assortment - There's not much I will attempt to add to what others have written here about her music and these songs, EXCEPT:

The sound on this CD is among the worst analog-to-digital mastering jobs I've ever heard, definitely the worst I've heard on a major label release - The cassette sounded better on my Walkman than this CD does on my home stereo - It's straight LP master tape to digital transfers like this that gave CDs such a bad rap when they were first introduced onto the market - Any amateur home recordist knows that audio needs to be very expressly mastered, in terms of EQ & dynamics/compression especially, for the medium on which it is to be listened to (excuse my clumsy syntax) - The art and science of remastering has dramatically improved in the past 15+ years since CDs became the predominant medium and the subsequent reissue of thousands of classic recordings - It is long overdue for this album to be rereleased in an expanded and remastered edition, along with Kate's other albums for that matter - With an artist of Kate Bush's reputation and broad appeal, I can't think of what they're waiting for - If Capitol Records did such a phenomenal job with remastering all those classic 50s/60s lounge records for the Ultra-Lounge series (which I highly recommend), then they ought to be able to do as good or better with this music - It certainly deserves better than what we're getting here...