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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think Kate Bush is rubbish?

238 replies

iK8 · 26/08/2014 17:57

Shrieking, arm flapping and mincing.

What am I missing? I'm sure she's a lovely woman but good lawd I cannot see the appeal.

OP posts:
TanteRose · 27/08/2014 08:51

ooh, excellent - a Kate Bush fred (albeit a VERY UNREASONABLE one!Wink)

have tickets, am flying thousands of miles next week to see her.

beyond excited Grin

anyone go last night?

OnlyLovers · 27/08/2014 09:21

Gosh.

'you must like Ronan Keating'. 'you've got cloth ears.' 'I'm disappointed when people say they don't get her.'

How sneery and superior?

BoneyBackJefferson · 27/08/2014 09:25

Do you think it would be possible to put in terms and conditions that anyone who posts something like this has to put in which type of music or artist they like to listen too?

I like some of her songs but not others.

CharlieSierra · 27/08/2014 09:40

My son went last night. He's just had me on the phone for an hour telling me it was beyond amazing.

MsAstronaut · 27/08/2014 09:42

I do rather dislike when people get mocked if they don't like something that everybody fawns over though. This whole notion of "if you don't like X then you must like this stuff that lots of other people like which must be shit because lots of people who I don't think are as cool as me like."

Totally rabbit. I shouldn't have to say it, but although I don't like Kate Bush, it doesn't mean I can actually only handle easy listening vanilla music. Someone mentioned Jill Scott, I love her. I love Bjork (weirdly as some might put her in the same experimental/screechy camp as Bush), Laura Mvula, and lots of esoteric folk, jazz and avant garde things – and a huge eclectic range of pop (though not Ronan Keating...)

Not liking Kate Bush doesn't mean having some kind of intelligence deficit or not understanding music. For me it really is about the voice and the dramatics - they both make me uncomfortable.

MsAstronaut · 27/08/2014 09:54

Actually come to think of it I always found Bowie objectionable for similar reasons. The song is OK, why don't you just sing it, we're not in a circus! When he released that new stuff recently I realised he is actually a great singer and songwriter, but I could never stomach the prancing and dramatics.

vladthedisorganised · 27/08/2014 10:34

Exactly MsAstronaut! I like all sorts of music but Kate Bush isn't really my thing. As it happens, rap is - although the chart stuff is often misogynistic crap (where I would also categorise a lot of other Radio-1-friendly tunes TBH), a listen to 'Burn Hollywood Burn', 'Treat Em Right' 'Winter Of The Long Hot Summer' shows that there's other stuff in the genre.

However, I know that while I can have a beaming grin on my face appreciating the verbal gymnastics of Chuck D, KRS-1 or Guru, others might not. And it's not that they don't have a poetic bone in their body, have cloth ears, have no appreciation of contemporary urban culture, live a sheltered suburban existence or only ever listen to Barry Manilow... it's just that it's not their thing, and that's OK.

I find Kate Bush's stuff a bit emotional for my taste TBH (probably just judging it on the basis of This Woman's Work/ Man With The Child In His Eyes/ Running Up That Hill), but I do like Bjork and PJ Harvey.

TalcumPowder · 27/08/2014 10:36

I'm not mocking anyone for not liking her, I'm just saying that there's a difference between saying 'nope, not to my taste' and 'She's rubbish'.

I don't like Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan's music - and I find Dylan's voice intensely annoying - but I recognise they just aren't to my taste, I don't think they're 'crap'.

squoosh · 27/08/2014 10:42

I hate The Smiths, absolutely hate them, but I can see that music has probably been better off overall for having had them in it.

BriarRainbowshimmer · 27/08/2014 11:37

"Wuthering fright" hehe.
She is definitely an unique artist. I respect her as an artist even if I don't listen to her.

Curlyweasel · 27/08/2014 11:46

MsAstronaut This might be why she was so popular with the fellers...

Great song writer, innovative and beautiful. She did write some proper shite too though...

LapsedPacifist · 27/08/2014 13:28

But there is no screechy howly stuff after her first 2 albums! It's such a shame the media focussed so heavily on 'Wuthering Heights' (1978) and kept playing it ad nauseum in the run up to last night's performance. (1989) is far more typical of the vocal register she uses now.

Molly Bloom's soliloquy from 'James Joyce's 'Ulysses', with Sufi imagery and pagan fire-worship - what's not to love? Grin And I want that frock too.

mumtosome61 · 27/08/2014 14:19

It's all over the news because it's only the second time Kate Bush has done a UK Live Tour - the last being 1979. It sold out in mere seconds/minutes.

I grew up with her music and unashamed uniqueness, and her music was a beacon of light for me in many, many dark days. I tried hard to get tickets, alas, no luck.

I dislike music snobbery though - I'd never tell someone they are stupid for not liking an artist I like/is considered brilliant, much like I'd never allow someone telling me what I like is considered stupid. Music is what it is - you listen to what you enjoy or speaks to you. I will quite happily listen to Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, Backstreet Boys and Taylor Swift in the same car journey. If that makes me less of a person or stupid, I couldn't care less Grin.

BringMeTea · 27/08/2014 14:23

Like her music or not she is an amazing songwriter/performer. She's been doing this stuff since she was a teenager. A feminist stance in what must have been a shockingly sexist music world. Seriously she deserves accolades heaped on her head for that alone.

Kate Bush rocks!

springchickennolonger · 27/08/2014 14:32

Her songs are strange, ethereal and unpredictable. I think she's a talented singer/songwriter but I don't get the dramatics either. I think she should just perform the bloody songs without the flapping about: imo it's a distraction from the music.

FrogStomp · 27/08/2014 14:36

I love Kate Bush more now than I did when I was a child in the 70's. Back then I thought she was a bit strange.

I think she's amazing, a fantastic singer/songwriter. I love December will be magic again and WH makes me go all goosebumpy, there's countless more, Babushka, The Man with the Child in his eyes etc....

Yes if you look at the old stuff on Youtube it looks dated but back in the 70's videos were a new phenomenon, look at Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. I think I'd chuckle at most 70's videos these days.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, I'm at work and haven't read all of the thread but why has she waited so long to tour again?

thelmachicken · 27/08/2014 14:38

I love her!
I spent many hours drinking wine and listening to cloudbusting as a student.

While I was watching the documentary on the iplayer, ds was sat on the couch playing on his laptop. He made the odd comment about her voice while it was on, and then when it finished he looked at the TV and said,'Hang on, that was on the iplayer...did you just watch that on purpose?'

FrogStomp · 27/08/2014 14:45

Her songs can make me feel incredible sad (when I'm in the mood to feel sad) but the same songs can equally make my stomach turn and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, without feeling depressed, just appreciating how lovely the song is.

I feel most smug that I tracked down her single December will be magic again, as it doesn't appear on her albums, couldn't find it on itunes etc Managed to hunt it down on an old Christmas CD

Grin
ArsenicyOldFace · 27/08/2014 14:47

YANBU

Well you might be but I'm right with you anyhow. She seems pleasant as a person though.

KEGirlOnFire · 27/08/2014 14:54

Well, I've just watched the programme on the BBCiplayer and I'm with you OP. Some of her songs I've liked but the majority just freak me out to be honest!! She seems sweet though.

shakethetree · 27/08/2014 15:09

Apparently people were crying with emotion last night, I don't think they cared what songs she performed, they just wanted to see her. She is an acquired taste, & you have to be fairly intelligent to 'get her'

Brilliant show by all accounts.

WhoeverYouWantMeToBe · 27/08/2014 15:11

I love 'This Woman's Work', heard it on a BBC/ITV drama about ten years or so ago, had Tamzin Outhwaite in it about a woman who had an affair with a married man, the wife found out, the OW got cancer and died, and the wife raised money for charity in her name? Anyone remember??

shakethetree · 27/08/2014 15:16

I know she wrote this woman's work for a film, never seen it though.
but that is such a sad song.

amert · 27/08/2014 15:18

She was a good dancer back in the day, and oddly beautiful. That was a long time ago... and I think it, her performance, was better then.

ArsenicyOldFace · 27/08/2014 15:18

Apparently people were crying with emotion last nigh

So would I have been if i'd been forced to listen to four hours' worth.

& you have to be fairly intelligent to 'get her'

What a snooty remark. You would also have to be fairly intelligent to come to some of the less flattering conclusions one could, theoretically, come to, if one were inclined to be gratuitously unkind about her work.

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