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Charted: October 26, 1985

Rating: 4.333 (average of 6 ratings)

Genre: rock > alternative

Quotable: “Epic electro-pop that tackled big issues of life and death and God with gripping drama and intensity.” – Barney Hoskyns, Amazon.com

Album Tracks:

  1. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)
  2. Hounds of Love
  3. The Big Sky
  4. Mother Stands for Comfort
  5. Cloudbursting
  6. And Dream of Sheep
  7. Under Ice
  8. Waking the Witch
  9. Watching You Without Me
  10. Jig of Life
  11. Hello Earth
  12. The Morning Fog

Sales (in millions):

sales in U.S. only --
sales in U.K. only - estimated 0.6
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated 3.0

Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 30
peak on U.K. album chart 1 3

Singles/Hit Songs:

  • Running Up That Hill (8/17/85) #30 US, #3 UK, #34 AR
  • Cloudbursting (10/26/85) #20 UK
  • Hounds of Love (3/1/86) #18 UK
  • The Big Sky (5/10/86) #37 UK

Notes: A 1997 reissue added second versions of “The Big Sky” and “Running Up That Hill” and added the tracks “Be Kind to My Mistakes,” “Under the Ivy,” “Burning Bridge,” and “My Lagan Love.”

Awards:

Rated one of the top 1000 albums of all time by Dave’s Music Database. Click to learn more. Mojo Magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums Q Magazine’s Top 100 Albums

Hounds of Love
Kate Bush
Review:
“Few women have expanded the vocabulary of rock as bewitchingly as Kate Bush; among male stars, only Prince may have taken as many risks.” BH “Hounds of Love saw Bush reining in the kookier aspects of The Dreaming, channelling them into epic electro-pop that tackled big issues of life and death and God with gripping drama and intensity.” BH The album signified “her breakthrough into the American charts” BE but “despite being Bush’s most successful album commercially” WK it was her “strongest album to date” BE and “no less experimental from a production standpoint than its predecessors.” WK

Hounds of Love “was also the first album produced by Bush entirely at her own home studio, and the results are spellbinding, the layered instruments recalling the Beatles at their most ornate, but also displaying an exquisite timbrel range, bringing out the richness of the individual instruments.” BE

“The album is split into two sides, with the first side, ‘Hounds of Love’, containing five ‘accessible’ pop songs, including the four singles.” WK “The second side is entitled ‘The Ninth Wave’, whose title is taken from a poem by Tennyson. Bush uses samples and vocals played in reverse to synthesized sounds and folk instrumentation.” WK

“The material ranges from the sensual (Hounds of Love, Running up That Hill – the latter one of the most sensual recordings ever made” BE and “one of the great singles of the ‘80s)” BH “to the mystical (Hello Earth, The Morning Fog).” BE “Cloudbusting was string-driven, magically pretty; Jig of Life showed that Bush is one of the few pop artists who can flirt with Celtic mysticism without sounding twee or trite.” BH

The album also “yielded a set of dazzling videos,” BE “the most famous of which is ‘Cloudbusting’, directed by Julian Doyle, and co-starring Donald Sutherland. The video – like the song – was inspired by the life of psychologist Wilhelm Reich.” WK

“In 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the album should be given consideration when listing albums released between 1978 and 1988 that have stood the test of time while remaining influential and enjoyable to this day.” WK

Review Source(s):

Running Up That Hill (video)

Cloudbursting (video)

Hounds of Love (video)

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Last updated November 16, 2010.