Track Listing

1. Wuthering Heights [New Vocal]
2. Cloudbusting
3. Man with the Child in His Eyes
4. Breathing
5. Wow
6. Hounds of Love
7. Running Up That Hill
8. Army Dreamers
9. Sat in Your Lap
10. Experiment IV
11. Dreaming
12. Babooshka

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28466 in Music
• Brand: BUSH,KATE
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Album Description
Limited Edition Japanese "Mini Vinyl" CD, faithfully reproduced using original LP artwork including the inner sleeve. Features most recently mastered audio including bonus tracks where applicable.

Customer Reviews

More like the Best Story, not the Whole Story
With five albums under her belt from EMI Records, it was time for Kate to put out a greatest hits. She'd made it big with Hounds Of Love, which spawned four hit singles, and The Whole Story brings her EMI songs to closure. And it was this album that introduced me to Kate Bush, and the rest is history. Key, []=original studio album.

The version of "Wuthering Heights" features a newer vocal, which is more developed than the girlish vocals of the Kick Inside days and helps the piano and drums of this song. Yes, she does sing about the longing about Kathy towards Heathcliff. Much better than the original.

"Cloudbusting" is my favorite single from here, especially with its martial rhythm set by the strings and synthesizers. The song and the video are related, as it's sung from the POV of the daughter of an inventor who creates a rainmaking machine that gets the government after the inventor, considered a threat to the men in power. [Hounds Of Love]

"Breathing" is one of Kate's most serious pieces, about the effects that radioactive fallout has on a baby still in the womb, and it's sung from the perspective of the infant. The addition of a cold official sounding voice reporting the results of fallout from a nuclear test and the crescendo that rises with the "What are we going to do, we are all going to die refrain" shows that Kate is an artist with political conscience. [Never For Ever]

One of Kate's best realized pieces is the piano ballad "The Man With The Child In His Eyes" on a man who is most surely her Prince Charming, [The Kick Inside]

The dreamy "Wow" about the travails of fame and show business [Lionheart] is followed by two songs from Hounds Of Love, the frantic title track, and "Running Up That Hill", where she is ready to make a deal with God and trade places. There's some weird background vocals towards the end.

The sombre guitar ballad "Army Dreamers" tells the story of a serviceman in the B.F.P.O. who's been killed and the opportunities he never had, such as a proper education, the ability to play a guitar, or getting married and having a child. "What a waste, army dreamers" Kate laments.

The upbeat weirdness of "Sat In Your Lap" tells the story of someone who wants to be an intellectual, scholar, full of knowledge, but can't be bothered to learn and just wants it set in her lap, i.e. "just gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme."

"Experiment IV" the new song, is about some people asked by the military to create a "sound that could kill someone from a distance," instead of "music made for pleasure, music made to flow." And the regrets of the inventors for making such a weapon is felt in the lyrics. The sound neatly fits in the Hounds Of Love era.

"The Dreaming" featuring a didgeridoo, and Kate's slight Australian twang, tells how the aborigines and the natural habitat are being exploited by the mining companies, with the aborigines being driven to drink and even kangaroos being hit by vehicles. [The Dreaming]

Finally, "Babooshka" is about a woman who tests her husband's fidelity by writing him anonymous letters, disguising herself as a younger version of herself, and seeing if he'll go through with an adulterous affair with his own wife. The piano is struck forcefully during the verses, before the electric guitar riffs kick in the prechorus and chorus. [Never For Ever]

Kate's greatest hits does not tell the "whole story", as she had two more albums and a record deal with Sony, but it tells the best stories of the recording chapters of her career, as they were the most experimentally creative and lyrically enriching.

Arty rock and pop

The Whole Story covers all of Kate bush's most memorable songs from the 1970s and early 1980s although it is by no means the whole story of her career. It opens with the re-recorded version of her spooky and atmospheric 1978 hit Wuthering Heights. This version has greater depth than the original single and still remains a most remarkable song based as it is on the novel of the same name.

Bush is a unique singer-songwriter with a gift for striking romantic imagery, although her work is not always immediately accessible. The Man With The Child In His Eyes is a complex and moving ballad, whilst Wow is a powerful atmospheric pop song.

Her music can be quite idiosyncratic and full of oneiric imagery, like Breathing and The Dreaming. On the other hand, Babooshka is a buoyant pop song with a catchy tune. This compilation is charming and very enjoyable. Overall, Kate's music can be described as a form of art rock, not always appealing on first listen, but very rewarding if you persist.

Great music but horrible audio fidelity
I first bought this album on vinyl, later again on cassette, and finally on CD - It was my introduction to this artist's very distinctive music, and the selection of tracks, given the original LP format and time frame of covered work, is a worthy assortment - There's not much I will attempt to add to what others have written here about her music and these songs, EXCEPT:

The sound on this CD is among the worst analog-to-digital mastering jobs I've ever heard, definitely the worst I've heard on a major label release - The cassette sounded better on my Walkman than this CD does on my home stereo - It's straight LP master tape to digital transfers like this that gave CDs such a bad rap when they were first introduced onto the market - Any amateur home recordist knows that audio needs to be very expressly mastered, in terms of EQ & dynamics/compression especially, for the medium on which it is to be listened to (excuse my clumsy syntax) - The art and science of remastering has dramatically improved in the past 15+ years since CDs became the predominant medium and the subsequent reissue of thousands of classic recordings - It is long overdue for this album to be rereleased in an expanded and remastered edition, along with Kate's other albums for that matter - With an artist of Kate Bush's reputation and broad appeal, I can't think of what they're waiting for - If Capitol Records did such a phenomenal job with remastering all those classic 50s/60s lounge records for the Ultra-Lounge series (which I highly recommend), then they ought to be able to do as good or better with this music - It certainly deserves better than what we're getting here...