Kate Bush - Withering Sights

Now I have admired Kate Bush as a recording artists since I first heard Running Up That Hill in 1985. It also had an ok video. Later, I saw Cloudbusting, which was a great bit of visual storytelling which featured Kate and a less worn looking Donald Sutherland playing a kind of Wilhelm Reich figure. But while Kate is an impeccable artist with sound, most of her videos are atrocious. As in way bad atrocious.
Like supercalafragilisticexpihellatrocious.

Case in point, these shots are from her first video in 1978, for Wuthering Heights. I did not intentionally pick unflattering shots of the normally attractive Miss Kate. All of the vid makes her look like a damaged street transient in a very clean gown, fresh out of the asylum. Lots of dry ice, cartwheels, and modern interpretive dance, with a little ballet and a lot of cringe-inducing shots. Granted, this was 1978, and budgets were nil and concepts thin. But good grief. She has been often compared to Peter Gabriel, which in many aspects is a fair parallel to draw, but not in terms of video quality.

Thankfully, her earliest material is also her worst. And while she has put out some sophmoric videos since (i.e. Love and Anger) she generally has done better for herself. One has to wonder what she will release with the coming of her first album in a dozen years, Aerial, due out next month.