I’ve been listening a lot to Kate Bush this week. This isn’t in itself very unusual—I’ve been listening to her music for as long as I’ve been interested in music at all—but this past week my iPod finger has been dialling up ‘Artists > Kate Bush > All’ regularly.

How many artists can give you a serious attack of the goosepimples while you’re standing at the bus stop? ‘Song of Solomon’ came round on random while I was waiting in a dreary, dirty bus shelter. The first part of the song is so delicate and quiet, with lyrics alternating between quotes from the biblical Song of Solomon, and rather more contemporary requests from a modern lover:

Don’t want your bullshit, yeah Just want your sexuality Don’t want excuses, yeah Write me your poetry in motion

Then there’s silence. I hold my breath slightly as usual at this point. Then the line, “I’ll do it for you…” comes in, with the Trio Bulgarka’s earthy-angel voices swelling and soaring in the background, wave upon wave of shivers sweep over me, and all the little hairs stand up on my arms. Wow (to quote Kate).

And that’s just one song: there are so many others that do the same for me. Kate Bush writes wonderful, honest songs about love and the loss of love (‘Never Be Mine’, ‘The Sensual World’, ‘Feel It’), but she also writes about many other non-traditional pop/rock topics. Have you ever heard a pop song about the wife of Houdini (‘Houdini’), Aborigine land rights (‘Sat in Your Lap’), the brutality of hand-to-hand conflict in war (‘Pull Out the Pin’) or a biography of an eccentric man who thought orgasms could power machines to make rain (‘Cloudbusting’)? Kate Bush has written songs on all of those topics.

For me, the true test of good music is longevity. I’ve been listening to Kate Bush for 13 years, and I still hear and feel new things when I do. And—if I am ever lucky enough to see Earth from space for myself—I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment about which Desert Island Disc I would take. I would choose ‘Hello Earth’ from ‘The Hounds of Love’.