Never for Ever
| Kate Bush
Never for Ever
Never for Ever is the third studio album by English singer Kate Bush. Released in September 1980, it was Bush's first number 1 album and was also the first ever album by a British female solo artist to top the UK album chart, as well as being the first album by any female solo artist to enter the chart at number 1. It has since been certified Gold by the BPI. It features the UK Top 20 singles "Breathing", "Army Dreamers" and "Babooshka", the latter being one of Bush's biggest hits. Bush co-produced the album with Jon Kelly. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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sputnik music
Kate's third solo album was no masterpiece but a fascinating and necessary step in her discography. Bush's writing had finally evolved enough to the point where she could write without relying too much on image or style. Whether it's experimenting with her remarkable vocal range, creative arrangements, or vivid lyrics, Never For Ever shows Kate Bush improving in all the right ways.
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AllMusic
Never for Ever has Kate Bush sounding vocally stable and more confident, taking what she had put into her debut single "Wuthering Heights" from 1978 and administering those facets into most of the album's content.
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The Benefits of Cold Coffee: A Music Review
In short, an album and an artist well worth acquainting yourself with. It has taken rather a long time to go from being fascinated and put off by this CD to just being fascinated, but the effort has been rewarded and now I feel ready to move on to another in her catalogue.
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NME
The possibilities are obvious on ‘Never For Ever’, the most lush of her albums to that point, where dreamy Minnie Riperton soul (‘Blow Away’) meets berserk vamping rock (‘Babooshka’). Its finest moment is the haunting ‘Breathing’ with Bush facing up to the burgeoning nuclear crisis as weapons move into Greenham Common. “What are we going to do/We are all going to die” is as direct as she ever gets, and has all the more grim power for that.
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Reaching Out
Kate annoys me enough to listen closely, whether that's good or bad I know not. This album, it goes without saying, will be as big an irritant to as many as it will be a vital financial acquisition to others. Either way you'll get her under your skin, you'll get her deep in the heart of you.
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The Solute Record Club
Never for Ever is the summation of Kate Bush as a singular and constantly experimental entity in the world of music. A unique character that makes unique characters, this record is ambitious, surreal and maintains that combination of the theatrical and the tender. But that still wasn’t enough for Kate. She wanted to see how far she could push her style, and this would result in an album that would alienate some followers in the process, and that I love to pieces.
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Adrian Denning
'Never For Ever' does still have one or two moments where the affair threatens to slip into the murky waters marked 'bland' and 'mediocre', yet stays above the surface as a genuinely interesting song is always right around the corner. Arguably the peak of her early period, she'd change dramatically next time around.
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Fear of Albums
A transitional album if I’ve ever heard one, Never for Ever is far more experimental than Kate Bush’s previous two works. She has started doing a lot of her own production, veering away from the orchestral sound we have come to know her by. Never for Ever features synthesizers and the like, and contains several songs with far from traditional structures. It takes a while to get used to, but this ends up being quite a rewarding album. The lyrics are good as ever, influenced strongly by Bush’s wide knowledge of literature and cinema.
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Rhino
Although Ms. Bush released two top-10 UK albums in a row, her second album, Lionheart, hadn't charted quite as high as her first, which is exactly the sort of thing that causes rock critics to giggle with glee and start ripping artists to shreds for having suffered a “sophomore slump.” But it's a pretty sorry excuse for a slump when an album hits #6, and even if anyone was foolish enough to believe that she was suffering through such a thing, Kate killed those suggestions stone dead when Never for Ever became not only her first #1 album but also the first studio album by any female solo artist to enter the UK Albums chart at #1.
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Stereogum
Never For Ever is Bush's most varied and musically exciting album. The Irish-inflected ballad "Army Dreamers" sits harmoniously next to the luxurious sparkle of "Egypt," which climaxes in a proggy 7/8 section.
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Aphoristic Album Reviews
Brimming with imagination and memorable melodies, Never For Ever would be a career peak for many artists, but Bush would grow even further with her next two albums.
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Music Musings and Such
Never for Ever’s first-half has some great songs – bookended by Babooshka and Egypt – but the remainder of the album, if anything, is stronger.
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BBC America
Now the wings are being allowed to stretch a bit. Having fought for a bit of time to do her work, Kate stormed into 1980 off the back of a successful and very theatrical tour, for which she had to have the first headset microphone specially built. Having taken over the production duties herself, and become smitten with the possibilities of the Fairlight synthesizer, she continued to build on the promise of those early songs with startling hits, like the infidelity fable “Babooshka” and “Army Dreamers,” which sampled the cocking mechanism from a wartime rifle and used it as a rhythm.
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Under the Deer
Powerful and compelling, displaying incredible maturity from the-then 23-year-old, [Never for Ever] set Bush up for a string of classics – The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, The Sensual World – that are amongst the greatest albums of the 1980s. It’s because of the acclaim of those successive records that Never For Ever is often overlooked. It shouldn’t be though; it’s a forgotten classic, fully deserving of re-evaluation.
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ProgSphere
‘Never For Ever’ really is a sweet, albeit short album . . . and if I had artistic pop needs that needed to be satiated, Kate Bush would always do the trick.
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