KATE BUSH - THE SENSUAL WORLD

Released: September 18, 1989

Charts:  UK: #12 

Released in September 1989, “The Sensual World” served as the title track and lead single from Kate Bush’s sixth studio album. Blending Celtic tones with Middle Eastern–influenced instrumentation, the song reached No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart and marked a shift toward warmer, more feminine production following the bold, muscular sound of “Hounds of Love”.

The song was originally conceived as Molly Bloom’s final soliloquy from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” set to music. Bush was captivated by a recording of actress Siobhán McKenna reading the passage years earlier and had imagined using Joyce’s exact text. When she was unable to obtain the rights from the Joyce estate, she reframed the idea: instead of quoting Molly Bloom directly, she wrote from the perspective of the character stepping out of the book—leaving her “black-and-white, two-dimensional world” and entering the vivid physicality of reality. The song expresses Molly’s astonishment at the sensuality of the natural world: touching grass, feeling the ground, seeing color, and experiencing the richness of being fully alive.

Bush told NME that the first element she had was Molly’s famous “Mmh yes,” which helped her shape the impressionistic, hushed quality of the vocals. After the Joyce estate initially denied permission, it took a year to rewrite the lyrics while keeping the emotional essence of the material. (In 2011, the estate finally granted rights, and Bush rerecorded the song with the original text as “Flower of the Mountain” for Director’s Cut.)

The track begins with chiming bells—an image tied to Molly Bloom’s memory of a marriage proposal in Joyce’s text. Bush chose bells for their celebratory resonance, noting that they mark major transitions in life: births, weddings, and deaths. She also felt they set a warm, open atmosphere for the album as a whole.

Irish uilleann piper Davey Spillane features prominently, performing a Macedonian melody called “Nevestinsko Oro.” Bush included it on instinct, saying it was one of the album’s many “Oh, what the hell—let’s try it” decisions that ended up working unexpectedly well.

Bush co-directed the music video with Peter Richardson of The Comic Strip. She appears as a timeless, almost medieval figure in a woodland setting, surrounded by elemental imagery—wind, leaves, textures, and movement. She wanted the video to remain simple and rooted in nature.

“The Sensual World” marked Bush’s third consecutive album as sole producer. She described its creation as an attempt to explore her femininity in a direct, unapologetic way—something she felt she hadn’t fully embraced during the powerful, more male-energy production aesthetic of “Hounds of Love”. She viewed Molly Bloom’s speech as a deeply positive expression of female interiority, and the title track was her way of channeling that voice through music.