Wow
Christ. One of these days I'll get you a full essay. Enjoy.
Wow (album version)
Video 1 (Keith Macmillan)
Video 2 (The Whole Story)
San Remo
ABBA
French TV
Tour of Life
It begins with the sound of an orchestra warming up, strings humming in anticipation of the trobairitz who will lead them. Then, a four-note synth part, which is looped for nearly the entire first minute of the song, when it gives way to the song’s rhythm section. Twenty-nine seconds in, the wail of a processed guitar ushers in the vocals of Kate Bush, who delivers the song’s opening line of “we’re all alone on the stage tonight” with equal trepidation and anticipation. “We’ve been told we’re not afraid of you,” she tells her audience, signaling a swap of the roles of star and audience. When Bush’s game began in 1978, she captured her audience immediately. After two albums, she’s started to let them know how it feels to be captured by them.
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The similarities between “Wow” and “Wuthering Heights” are largely structural. Both songs have some of the keenest hooks Bush wrote at the time, with the arpeggio of “Wuthering” and the looped synth of “Wow,” followed by tense, melodically wrought verses, and breaking into a triumphant chorus. “Wow” and “Wuthering Heights” are similarly well paced, with “Wuthering Heights” breaking from its catchy verse and chorus with a bridge before shifting back into its elated chorus and subsequent outro. “Wow” is shorter, its album version capping off at four minutes (just twenty-eight seconds shorter than “Wuthering Heights”), with its intro which is built into the verse, keeping the song moving after its chorus. The chorus and verse are repeated twice each, with the intro and outro essentially built into the verse, providing the song with a smooth flow while also breaking it into distinguishable segments. The keen poppiness and brevity of “Wow” make it Bush’s most chart-suitable song since “Wuthering Heights.” As “Lionheart’s” one single to reach the top 20 (“Hammer Horror” just barely made it into the top 40), “Wow” is well-served by Bush’s keen eye for musical structure and creating tension. She’d trained her audience to be familiar with how her songs work. “Wow” demonstrates they wanted more of it.
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As we’ve noted throughout our exploration of Lionheart, Bush’s approach to performance at this time is largely a negative one which focuses on the anxieties and pressure not to fail which comes with it. Every song from “Symphony in Blue” to “Hammer Horror” has dealt with the interior experience of being anticipated (even “In the Warm Room” can be read as an audience member waiting to see a star). Lionheart’s stage is a place where the soul of the performer is laid bare in all its grandeur and monstrosity. In most of the album’s songs, this tension plays out in a kind of horror story where a character loses their mind in the spotlight. This is realized straightforwardly in “Hammer Horror,” which uses gothic aesthetics to explore the horrors at their heart. “Wow” isn’t exactly less down on the stage than the rest of the album — instead of taking the voice of the performer, “Wow” seems to be from the audience’s perspective. “We’re all alone on the stage tonight/we’ve been told we’re not afraid of you” and “we know all our lines so well” suggest an audience well versed in how to respond to stars and performances.