#88 Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time
- 2025 Album Rank
- 88
- 2011 Album Rank
- 143
- Total Points
- 756
- Year Released
- 1985
- Billboard 200 Chart Peak
- 30 (1985) / 12 (2022)
- Weeks at #1
- N/A
- RIAA Sales Certification
- N/A (Fewer than 500,000 copies sold)
- Buy Album
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Hounds of Love Album Details
Kate Bush's fifth album Hounds of Love was both a bold artistic leap and a commercial breakthrough. After the relative obscurity of 1982's The Dreaming, Bush returned in 1985 with an album that combined her experimental tendencies with an accessible pop sensibility, firmly reestablishing her as a visionary force in music.
The record is famously divided into two halves: the first side, dubbed Hounds of Love, features a series of immediate and dynamic singles. The second side, titled The Ninth Wave, is a conceptual suite chronicling the hallucinatory experience of a woman adrift at sea, moving through fear, memory, and death. This structure allowed Bush to embrace both mainstream and avant-garde ambitions on a single album.
Interesting Facts About Hounds of Love
- Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) became her biggest hit, driven by its thunderous drum machine, eerie synths, and lyrical plea for empathy between lovers. It re-entered the global charts in 2022 following its placement in the Netflix series Stranger Things.
- Cloudbusting, inspired by Peter Reich's memoir about his father Wilhelm Reich, was paired with a Donald Sutherland starring video and exemplifies Bush's cinematic storytelling approach.
- Hounds of Love and The Big Sky rounded out the single releases, showcasing her ability to blend complex arrangements with memorable hooks.
- The Ninth Wave suite includes And Dream of Sheep, Under Ice, and Waking the Witch, using disorienting vocals, samples, and layered harmonies to depict a surreal near-death experience.
- The album was recorded in her home studio and heavily utilized the Fairlight CMI digital sampler, which Bush had embraced early on. Her role as sole producer and arranger was rare for a female artist at the time, and it gave her total control over the album's sound and structure. The result is a meticulously crafted work that blends art pop, classical, and electronic textures with poetic narrative ambition.
- While outtakes are few, Under the Ivy, released as a B-side to Running Up That Hill, is widely considered among her finest unreleased work. Another B-side, Not This Time, thematically complements the album's exploration of love and vulnerability. Early demos of Running Up That Hill reveal how fully realized Bush's vision was even in its earliest stages.
- Live performances from this era were nonexistent, as Bush did not tour the album upon release. However, in 2014's Before the Dawn residency, she performed the entire Ninth Wave sequence on stage for the first time, bringing its haunting themes to life through theatrical staging and live instrumentation.
- Hounds of Love is frequently cited as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. Its fusion of pop accessibility and conceptual daring inspired a generation of artists including Tori Amos, Björk, Bat for Lashes, and Florence + the Machine. Decades later, it remains a landmark of sonic innovation, emotional depth, and artistic independence.
Hounds of Love Tracklist
- Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) - Reached #30 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 1985 and #3 in 2022
- Hounds of Love
- The Big Sky
- Mother Stands for Comfort
- Cloudbusting
- And Dream of Sheep
- Under Ice
- Waking the Witch
- Watching You Without Me
- Jig of Life
- Hello Earth
- The Morning Fog
