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Apple Music 100 Best Albums

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Hounds of Love

Kate Bush

50

Nothing else has ever come close to its mix of pop hooks and avant-garde sound-sculpting.

If Kate Bush’s first two albums were steeped in the art-rock of the ’70s, then the British singer-songwriter’s fifth LP in 1985 didn’t just reflect its era—it helped define it. Few songs are more evocative of the sound of mid-’80s pop than the eternal “Running Up That Hill”, with its gated drums, quasi-dance beat, eerie vocal effects and instantly recognisable synthesiser melody. Likewise, few albums did more to take the ambition of progressive rock and port it into the digital era.

“Her voice was so beautiful, to the point where I really believed that if I could sing along with her and hit the same notes that I had a tiny chance to be able to be a legit singer at some point.”

Alanis Morissette

Split across two side-length suites, the album grapples with big themes—the gulf between men and women, the fierceness of a mother’s love, the nature of dreams—with Bush’s voice an instrument of breathtaking power, capable of both tenderness and force. In 1985, there was nothing else like it out there. And in some ways, nothing since has ever come close to its mix of pop hooks and avant-garde sound-sculpting. But Hounds of Love also opened an entire world to be explored, with generations of musicians—Björk, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Joanna Newsom, to name just a few—following in Bush’s wake.

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The Joshua Tree

U2

49

U2’s leap into global domination explored the liberations that come with constraint.

The Joshua Tree represented something new for U2: the gospel influences, the emotional nakedness, the introduction of understatement to a sound that had defined itself by its forthrightness. In the past, they’d let their songwriting be loose and in the moment. Now they were exploring the liberations that come with constraint.
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If you lean in close, you can pull apart the sound in layers: the wisps of guitar, the bits of pocket-watch percussion (“One Tree Hill”). But if you sit back, it sounds minimal and direct. The words point to romantic love (“With or Without You”, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”) but also to the search for God and meaning—a reflection of the dualities they found in both gospel and the romanticism of Van Morrison and Patti Smith. The backdrop—the inky washes of sound, courtesy of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois—captures constant change. But the foreground—the march-like rhythms, the impassioned vocals—is steadfast and firm. They rock with the tools of their era, but they also tap into something eternal.

The Joshua Tree by U2