Hounds of Love

Released on 16 September 1985 on EMI, with a launch party at the London Planetarium on 5 September, it was made largely in her own studio. In summer 1983 she recorded demos on eight tracks at home with a LinnDrum, a Fairlight and a piano, then transferred them to 24 tracks. Official sessions began in November 1983, there were sessions in Ireland in spring 1984, and overdubbing and mixing took a year, finishing in June 1985.

Side one is the title section, with Running Up That Hill and Cloudbusting. Side two is The Ninth Wave, a seven-part suite about a woman alone in the water at night. Waking the Witch quotes the shanty Blood Red Roses, the choir on Hello Earth sings the Georgian song Tsintskaro, and the line about something in the trees in the title track is sampled from the 1957 film Night of the Demon, spoken by Maurice Denham. Brian Tench engineered and mixed most of the album, Julian Mendelsohn mixed two tracks, Michael Kamen wrote the orchestral arrangements and Bill Whelan the Irish ones.

Reception

It entered the UK chart at number one, displacing Madonna's Like a Virgin, and went double platinum in the UK. It sold 1.1 million copies worldwide by 1998 and was her first album in the US top 40. Sounds called it dramatic, moving and unashamedly romantic, and NME's Jane Solanas called her a genius. Rolling Stone's first Bush review said it both dazzles and bores. In retrospect, Pitchfork placed it fourth among the best albums of the 1980s in 2018, Rolling Stone ranked it 68th in its 2020 list of 500 greatest albums, and NPR's 2018 poll put it fourth among albums by women. In 2022 it reached number 12 on the Billboard 200 and number one on the Top Alternative Albums chart.

A 1997 EMI reissue added the B-sides Under the Ivy, Burning Bridge, My Lagan Love and Be Kind to My Mistakes. In 2014 she played almost the whole album at Before the Dawn, leaving out only The Big Sky and Mother Stands for Comfort.