One in every of England’s most authentic and widely-admires musical artists, Kate Bush is a real nationwide treasure. However, in a 1993 interview with Britain’s [now defunct] Q journal, the then-35-year-old singer admitted that one among her most poetic songs about her homeland made her cringe with embarrassment.
Oh England My Lionheart is the closing tune on facet one among Bush’s second album, Lionheart, launched on November 10, 1978, lower than 9 months on from the discharge of her million-selling debut album, The Kick Inside. That includes lyrics akin to “Peter Pan steals the children in Kensington Park / You learn me Shakespeare on the rolling Thames“, the tune was described by Bush as “a form of poetical play, in the event you like, on the romantic visuals of England, and the second World Warfare.”
“It’s solely bought acoustic devices on it and it’s completed … nearly madrigally, you realize,” she instructed Melody Maker‘s Harry Doherty in November ’78. “I dare say lots of people will assume that it’s only a load of outdated slush however it’s simply an space that I feel it’s good to cowl. Every thing I do may be very English and I feel that’s one cause I’ve damaged via to numerous nations.”
Ffifteen years on, nevertheless, Bush was somewhat much less enamoured of the tune. When Q author (now BBC 6Music presenter) Stuart Maconie talked about it to Bush, the singer-songwriter gasped, “Do you want that one? It makes me simply need to die. It is such an outdated tune.”
When Maconie enquired as to which different outdated songs made Bush wince, she responded, “My God, hundreds. Completely hundreds.”
“Both the lyric’s not thought out correctly or it is simply crap or the performances weren’t effectively executed,” she continued. “However you need to get it in context. You have been doing it on the time and it was the very best you may do then. You have to stay with it. A few of these early songs although, you assume, What was I desirous about? Did I write that?.
“There’s not only one,” she admitted. “There’s too many to say. However I used to be very younger, so I may be mild on myself for that. Having stated that, I feel a few of my lyrics have been simply, effectively, mad actually. And why not! You have to be ready to fail and get a bit harm or bruised alongside the best way.”
In a 1980 interview with Sounds journal, Bush revealed that when somebody from EMI noticed the duvet of the Lionheart album, with the singer sporting a lion costume, he knowledgeable her that it seemed “too sexual”. Bush replied that this was intentional and acceptable, as a result of she’d included a tune about bestiality on the report. Cue a report label freak-out, which solely eased when Bush burst out laughing and stated she was joking.
