Kate Bush - "Wuthering Heights"
Kate Bush - "Wuthering Heights (New Vocal)"

Kate Bush was only 28 years old when she released her first greatest hits collection. Eight years had passed since the release of her 1978 debut, The Kick Inside, an album of ornate musical curiosities, which despite its complexity and occasional shrillness became an enormous success. During the intervening years, Bush had become dissatisfied with the girlish quality of her voice on the album's hit single, "Wuthering Heights" (based on a BBC adaptation of Bronte's dour book), and decided to re-record the vocal for the compilation. Listen above to the teenage prodigy's masterpiece and the veteran 28-year-old's cover.

The effects of age on an artist are much like the effects of age on a fruit. The Kate Bush of the second version is softer, even a bit mushy, and a good deal sweeter. Take the sublime chorus, beautiful in both versions, but icy in the first and soulful in the second. Or consider the second version's thunderous, echoing snare drum, which underscores the more emotive quality of the re-recording. In the later song's final, oversung minute, Bush may even be displaying the first signs of putrefaction.

In fruit I tend toward sour and in song toward sweet. The highlight of the two versions is the wrenching bridge of the second (2:14-2:34), which could not have been achieved by a greener artist, and on balance, despite its faults, I prefer the re-recording. But then I'm 29 now, perhaps a bit putrefied myself; who knows what 20-year-old me would have said.

[Buy The Kick Inside, The Whole Story]