Kate Bush - "Never For Ever" (1980)

This was Miss Bush's third album and first full length album she produced herself (along with Jon Kelly). I purchased this album in my late teens and have always experienced it as belonging to the middle region of Kate's creations. Overall it’s a good album, there are some really beautiful songs, at the same time there are albums with Kate which are even better. And some which are worse. Kind of like a football team in the second division.

This is (so far) the only Kate Bush album without a title track (ie, there is no song on the album called Never For Ever) and it’s the first album where Kate used drum machines and synthesizers.

Personally I think the album in many ways is a step forward from the previous Lionheart, this goes for the quality of the songs, the sound and the production. In other words, the entire album. It also contains some tracks that are not songs of the more traditional verse-chorus structure but leans more towards mood creators, such as Delius and Night Scented Stock. Even if Kate in many ways had always been an innovative and progressive artists songs had on the previous two albums still been more traditionally structured. On Never For Ever she seems to visit some new ground, maybe it's because of her newfound freedom as a producer.

It was the first album by a female solo artist in England which debuted as number one in the charts, and the first album ever by a female solo artist to become number one in England. This may sound strange, it was already 1980, but before acts like Diana Ross & The Supremes had been number one, but strictly speaking this was a band. Furthermore, it was a compilation, like a Greatest Hits. Similarly, Barbara Streisand had been number one with a Greatest Hits. But Kate was the first woman who became number one with an original album. This album is historical in this way.

Just as I always felt this is an average Kate album, I’ve listened to it on an average intensity. But I should clarify that I like, more or less, all of Kate's albums and she is one of my favourite artists. So an average album by Kate Bush is still a very good album. And the song Army Dreamers has always been one of my absolute Kate Bush favourites. Breathing is another favourite song from the album which is about the cheerful subject of nuclear fallout experienced by a baby inside the mother's womb.

The album got different cover in Japan as the European one was a little too daring. You can’t have a woman on the cover from whom it flies out a lot of birds from beneath her ​​skirt. Instead they magnified one part of the picture (not the skirt). It can also be mentioned that Roy Harper does some backing vocals on the album. Babooshka was the best-selling single and peaked at number five on the charts, personally, I have never really liked that song.

Favorite Songs

Army Dreamers

Breathing

Tracklist

Side A

1. Babooshka 3:20

2. Delius (Song Of Summer) 2:51

3. Blow Away (For Bill) 3:33

4. All We Ever Look For 3:47

5. Egypt 4:10

Side B

1. The Wedding List 4:15

2. Violin 3:15

3. The Infant Kiss 2:50

4. Night Scented Stock 00:51

5. Army Dreamers 2:55

6. Breathing 5:29