70. Kate Bush, The Whole Story (EMI, 1986)
Not quite the whole story any longer--fans have been crying out for a double disc anthology or at least a career-spanning hits collection (let alone a new album), but these twelve songs still serve as a magnificent primer to the high priestess of post-punk weird. There's no rhyme or reason to the nonchronlogical sequencing: it opens understandably with her first (and in the UK) biggest hit, "Wuthering Heights", a phantasmagorical distillation of Bronte in five minutes that still has no parallel. From there, we get ecstatic crushes ("Hounds of Love"), slow-forming, enveloping lust ("Running Up That Hill"), freakouts ("Sat in Your Lap"), post-apocalyptic hysteria ("Breathing"), mystical wide-eyed wonderment ("The Man With The Child in His Eyes") and so much more. To think that all these songs could be and were hits is like fighting the urge to take your shoes off and throw them in the lake.
Not quite the whole story any longer--fans have been crying out for a double disc anthology or at least a career-spanning hits collection (let alone a new album), but these twelve songs still serve as a magnificent primer to the high priestess of post-punk weird. There's no rhyme or reason to the nonchronlogical sequencing: it opens understandably with her first (and in the UK) biggest hit, "Wuthering Heights", a phantasmagorical distillation of Bronte in five minutes that still has no parallel. From there, we get ecstatic crushes ("Hounds of Love"), slow-forming, enveloping lust ("Running Up That Hill"), freakouts ("Sat in Your Lap"), post-apocalyptic hysteria ("Breathing"), mystical wide-eyed wonderment ("The Man With The Child in His Eyes") and so much more. To think that all these songs could be and were hits is like fighting the urge to take your shoes off and throw them in the lake.
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