Hounds of Love

This article is about the album. For the title track, see Hounds of Love (song). For the unrelated film, see Hounds of Love (film).

Hounds of Love
Cover art for Hounds of Love: a half-body photo of Kate Bush in a purple dress, flanked by two dogs
Studio album by
Kate Bush
Released16 September 1985 (1985-09-16)
RecordedSummer 1983 – June 1985
Studio
Genre
Length47:33
LabelEMI
ProducerKate Bush
Kate Bush chronology
Kate Bush
(1984) 		Hounds of Love
(1985) 		The Whole Story
(1986)
Singles from Hounds of Love
  1. "Running Up That Hill"
    Released: 5 August 1985
  2. "Cloudbusting"
    Released: 14 October 1985
  3. "Hounds of Love"
    Released: 17 February 1986
  4. "The Big Sky"
    Released: 21 April 1986[3]

Hounds of Love is the fifth studio album by the English musician Kate Bush, released on 16 September 1985 by EMI Records.[4] It was a commercial and artistic success and marked a return to the public eye for Bush after the relatively low sales of her previous album, 1982's The Dreaming. The album's lead single, "Running Up That Hill", became one of Bush's biggest hits, giving Bush her second UK number-one single in June 2022. The album's first side produced three further singles, "Cloudbusting", "Hounds of Love", and "The Big Sky". The second side, subtitled The Ninth Wave, forms a conceptual suite about a woman drifting alone in the sea at night.

Hounds of Love received critical acclaim in both contemporary and retrospective reviews. It is considered by many fans and music critics to be Bush's best album, and has been regularly voted one of the greatest albums of all time.[5] It was Bush's second album to top the UK Albums Chart, and in the US it reached the top 40 on the Billboard 200. Hounds of Love is Bush's best-selling studio album,[6] having been certified double platinum for 600,000 sales in the UK,[7] and by 1998 it had sold 1.1 million copies worldwide.[8] The album was nominated at the 1986 Brit Awards for Best British Album, at which Bush was also nominated for Best British Female and Best British Single for "Running Up That Hill". In 2022, the album re-entered various charts, including reaching number one on the Billboard Top Alternative Albums, due to the appearance of "Running Up That Hill" in the Netflix series Stranger Things.[9]


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  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference RS500 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Top 15 Sophisti-Pop Albums". Classic Pop. 25 August 2021. Archived from the original on 30 May 2024. Retrieved 14 October 2024.
  3. ^ "Music Week" (PDF). p. 62.
  4. ^ Smith, Robin (14 September 1985). "From Hills to Hounds". Record Mirror. p. 4. ISSN 0144-5804.
  5. ^ Roberts, David, ed. (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records. pp. 400–401. ISBN 978-1-904994-10-7.
  6. ^ Fitzgerald Morris, Peter (1997). Hounds of Love (CD booklet). Kate Bush. London: EMI. p. 3.
  7. ^ "British Phonographic Industry searchable website". Archived from the original on 9 September 2017. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
  8. ^ "100 Greatest Albums Ever". Q. No. 137. February 1998. pp. 37–68.
  9. ^ Rutherford, Kevin (7 June 2022). "Kate Bush Earns First Billboard No. 1 Album Thanks to 'Stranger Things' Boost". Billboard. Retrieved 7 June 2022.