Hounds of Love

Hounds of Love is the fifth studio album by British singer-songwriter and musician Kate Bush, released by EMI Records on 16 September 1985. Bush also produced the album which was recorded between January 1984 – June 1985

The album was a commercial success and marked a return to the mainstream for Bush after the relatively poor sales of her previous album The Dreaming (1982). The album's lead single, Running Up That Hill, became one of Bush's biggest hits, and three further successful singles, Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love, and The Big Sky were all Top 40 hits. The second side of the album, subtitled "The Ninth Wave", forms a conceptual suite about a person drifting alone in the sea at night.

Hounds of Love went straight to no.1 on the first week of its release and remained at the top for a total of three weeks and became the 14th biggest selling album of the year (3rd biggest selling female artist after Madonna and Alison Moyet. It was placed at number 10 in the NME critics' list of the best albums of 1985.

The album was remastered and reissued with six bonus tracks in 1997

Tracklisting
Side one: Hounds of Love
 * EMI KAB1 (LP), CDP7461642 (CD)
 * 1) Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) 5:03
 * 2) Hounds of Love 3:02
 * 3) The Big Sky 4:41
 * 4) Mother Stands for Comfort 3:07
 * 5) Cloudbusting 5:10

Side two: The Ninth Wave


 * 1) And Dream of Sheep 2:45
 * 2) Under Ice 2:21
 * 3) Waking the Witch 4:18
 * 4) Watching You Without Me 4:06
 * 5) Jig of Life 4:04
 * 6) Hello Earth 6:13
 * 7) The Morning Fog 2:34


 * 1997 Bonus tracks
 * 1) The Big Sky (Meteorological Mix) 7:44
 * 2) Running Up That Hill (12" Mix) 5:45
 * 3) Be Kind To My Mistakes 3:00
 * 4) Under The Ivy 2:08
 * 5) Burning Bridge 4:38
 * 6) My Lagan Love 2:30

Legacy

 * In January 2006, NME named it the 41st best British album of all time, and at no.48 in The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2013.
 * Much of the album featured in Kate Bush's comeback live performance Before the Dawn in 2014, and the subsequent eponymous live album released in 2016.
 * After being featured in the Netflix series Stranger Things, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) became a major worldwide hit reaching no.1 in the UK Top 40 in June 2022, thirty-seven years after its original release as a single.