#27 Kate Bush - Sunset

(summer playlist, #4)

Album: Aerial (2005)

Lyrics excerpt:
Who knows who wrote that song of Summer

That blackbirds sing at dusk?
This is a song of colour
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust
Then climb into bed and turn to dust

Reasons to love this song:
Birdsong -- and the passage of one day -- are the subject of the second part of Bush's 2005 album Aerial, A Sky Of Honey. I chose to describe Sunset as a "summer song", but all the songs on A Sky Of Honey are actually summer songs, a celebration of life on a warm summer's day full of birdsong. If I say this album makes one happy to be alive it will sound horribly clichéd, but -- I'm sorry! -- it really does.

Link to Amazon preview:
An Endless Sky Of Honey
(The whole Sky Honey as one song)

YouTube link:
This video shows the album cover, which looks like a photo of islands in the sea, but is actually a waveform of a blackbird song.

#3 Kate Bush - Jig Of Life

Album:
Hounds of Love (1985)

Lyrics excerpt:
This moment in time,
It doesn't belong to you, 
It belongs to me,
And to your little boy and to your little girl,
And the one hand clapping:
Where on your palm is my little line,
When you're written in mine
As an old memory?

Reasons to love this song: 
The second side of Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love, entitled The Ninth Wave, tells the story of a woman drowning in the sea, struggling to keep awake and alive. In Jig of Life, she is in danger of giving in to sleep (and death), but her future self appears to her and angrily demands that she stays alive -- she is to live a long life, give birth two two children and grow old. The music is lively and fast-paced, in strong contrast to the melancholic Watching You Without Me which precedes it. It is as if the old woman was using the energy of the folk dance to shake her younger self awake.
The song features a spoken poem, written and performed by Kate's brother John Carder Bush. This is my favourite use of spoken word in a song.

YouTube Link:
The album version