This Woman’s Work box set released 30 years ago today

It’s surreal to think that this box set is actually 30 years old. Released a year after The Sensual World while Kate was in the thick of recording what would become The Red Shoes, it was the first time she had officially gathered together a lot of the “odds and sods”, B-sides and 12″ mixes from her then 12-year career. The box sets contained all 6 of Kate’s studio albums released up to that point. Expensive sets at the time for fans, especially those just wanting those extra tracks, they are just as sought after today on the collector market. In fact the huge 9 vinyl disc LP version of the set (8 CD and 8 cassette versions were also released) can sometimes fetch eye-watering prices now, depending on condition and the inclusion of those all important KT stickers! The box set even contains some tracks that didn’t make it to The Other Sides remastered rarities collection from 2018, including The Empty Bullring, Not This Time, Ken (from the Comic Strip film “GLC”) and the four Live on Stage EP tracks. At the time it almost felt like Kate was looking back on a long career in music and that this was gathering up her life’s work…here’s the note she included in the accompanying booklet of photographs:

Has it really been twelve years already?… Is this how it was Rip Van Winkle? Looking through these photos I haven’t seen for years, and listening to B-sides of singles I’d forgotten about, has been an interesting exercise for me.
I think my music and I have changed a lot, and when I was making the first album, which at that time was my greatest goal. I never imagined that a box-set of my work would be out in 1990 and I would still be making albums. That’s a nice feeling.

Whoever you are – thank you for listening and please be kind to my mistakes…. because I’m not.

Many, many thanks to EVERYONE involved in making these albums, and to the photographers whose work appears here: – Gered Mankowitz, Terry Walker, Brian Griffin, Guido Harari and especially John Carder Bush

I would like to dedicate this special edition to the special memory of Alan Murphy and Gary Hurst.

With love,

Kate Bush

xx

Kate Bush, 1990