Some overstatements regarding Kate Bush's "The Kick Inside"

I haven't written about a film in a while on here, and that's because I'm working my way through Terriers. After that, I'm going to catch up on Justified. I still intend on seeing a few 2011 films I haven't seen yet before I wrap up that year-end list, but for now, expect some more music posts.

Tonight, I intend on asserting totally ridiculous things and barely defending them and asking you to go along with it. Okay, not exactly true. It's pretty widely accepted that The Kick Inside, the first album by Kate Bush, has grown to be thought of as a crucial entry in the canon of rock history. But I think it's responsible for an entire movement – not all of which I can defend – that I'll roughly define as "female auteur music." It's not a wholly accurate label, but it's useful.

Basically, if you're a fan of PJ Harvey, tUnE-yArDs, Joanna Newsom, Florence + the Machine, St. Vincent, or really any other musical act that's a) just a little odd and b) dominated by a female vocalist whose influence pervades every fiber of the music, you need to let The Kick Inside into your life.

Yeah, "Wuthering Heights" is the highlight here, an airy retelling of Heathcliff and Cathy's story brought to life by Bush's falsetto and a powerful David Gilmour-esque guitar solo. It remains Bush's only #1 hit in the UK, and it may hold up as her best song – although the 53 year old behind the excellent 50 Words for Snow probably hates hearing that about something she wrote when she was 19.

Beyond "Wuthering Heights" is a full album of boundary-breaking art rock at a time when that pseudo-genre was still being defined. There's things here that wouldn't be alien on a David Bowie or Peter Gabriel album from the same decade, but it's doing so much more. Before Kate Bush, there wasn't really a female voice doing something so avant-garde and so uniquely herself as The Kick Inside. Perhaps people like Joan Baez, Billie Holiday, Yoko Ono came close, but where the former two stuck to closely to the canon and the latter was too much of a weirdo to garner much crossover appeal without the presence of John Lennon, Bush brought prog rock's survivors and casual radio listeners and girl-power advocates under a banner that was both hummable and genre-defying. "Moving," "Feel It," "Oh to Be in Love," and "Them Heavy People" (to almost randomly name four high points) were challenging in four totally different ways but still managed to have devastating hooks that bury their way into the listener's brain after a single listen.

In some ways, The Kick Inside is the most important album to come out since the dawn of punk. If it had never happened, year-end lists would look might different not just this year but most every year since its 1978 release. So play "Wuthering Heights" one more time, remember why it kicks so much ass and, for God's sake, thank Kate Bush for her contributions.