Kate Bush was certainly an influential and intelligent figure, but was also a typical

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>Kate Bush was certainly an influential and intelligent figure, but was also a typical compromise of the 1970s, only half-heartedly experimental, continuously flirting with the pop charts. She helped redefine the singer-songwriter in the era of the new wave, but then the new wave had already made that figure obsolete. Her main contributions were in the vocal department: a four-octave range that mauled folk, opera and world-music, often in a shrill register halfway between a childish scream and a soprano howl. Her arrangements were not as revolutionary as advertised, borrowing as they did from Joni Mitchell and Peter Gabriel, but they did introduce electronics into a folk-rock format and crafted claustrophobic atmospheres. Kick Inside (1978), a terrifying personal diary, and The Dreaming (1982), the ultimate testament of her eccentric, lush, futuristic sound, represent the two poles of her work. The Freudian travelogue of Hounds Of Love (1985), fueled by even denser orchestration, ended twenty years later with the philosophical meditation of Aerial (2005), mostly hushed by intimate chamber textures.