Shiny & New Turns 2: #20 "Hounds of Love" - Kate Bush

“I found a fox caught by dogs / He let me take him in my hands"

The first time I heard Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love” I was sitting on a train and the song started up at the precise moment the vehicle powered off into the distance. It gave me the kind of shivers music fans kill for and immediately became one of my favourite songs of all time. Kate Bush’s genius is that she shrouds her melodic and euphoric pop in a delicious and unpretentious mystery and “Hounds of Love” epitomises this. It’s instantaneously memorable, exhilarating and breathtaking but shot through with darkness and shade.

The song appears to tell the story of someone attempting to brew up the courage to act on and embrace love for the first time, having always been too scared – a sentiment not entirely original or ground breaking – but the way Bush explores interlocking themes, (“I found a fox caught by dogs / He let me take him in my hands / His little heart, it beat so fast / And I'm ashamed of running away”), tying images of mortality and violence into the song, like distorted reflections in the water she takes “two steps” on, is a mark of an unmatched songwriting master.