"Aerial" is the eighth album by English singer-songwriter and musician Kate Bush. It was released as a double album in 2005, twelve years after her 1993 album The Red Shoes. The album peaked at No. 3 in the UK.
Aerial is Bush's first double album and was released after a twelve-year absence from the music industry, during which she focused on family and raising her son, Bertie. The anticipation for the album was immense, with press articles devoted to Bush appearing months or even years before its release. Like her previous album, The Red Shoes, Aerial does not feature a cover photograph of Bush, but instead an image that reflects the album's themes of sky, sea, and birdsong. The cover art, which seems to show a mountain range at sunset reflected on the sea, is actually a waveform of a blackbird song superimposed on a glowing photograph.
Aerial is one of Bush's most critically acclaimed albums. Musically, the album is a multi-layered work, incorporating elements of folk, Renaissance, classical, reggae, flamenco, and rock. As with her 1985 album Hounds of Love, Aerial is divided into two thematically distinct collections. The first disc, subtitled A Sea of Honey, features a set of unrelated songs, including the hit single "King of the Mountain," a Renaissance-style ode to her son Albert "Bertie" McIntosh, performed with period instruments, and a song about Joan of Arc titled "Joanni." In the song "π," Bush sings the number to its 78th decimal place, then from its 101st to its 137th decimal place. The piano and vocal piece "A Coral Room," which deals with the loss of Bush's mother and the passage of time, was hailed by critics as "stunning" and "profoundly moving" and is often regarded as one of the most beautiful pieces Bush has ever recorded.
The second disc, subtitled A Sky of Honey, consists of a single piece of music exploring the experience of a summer day from morning to the next sunrise. The songs are rich with birdsong and references to the sky and sunlight, with the sea also playing an important role. The piece begins with blackbirds singing in the dawn chorus, a woodpigeon cooing, and Bush's son saying, "Mummy, Daddy, the day is full of birds." It moves through a visit to a painter working on a new pavement art ("An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link"), then shifts to a crimson "Sunset." The interlude "Aerial Tal" features Bush imitating various birdsongs, while "Somewhere in Between" celebrates the ambiguity of dusk. "Nocturn" describes a pair of lovers bathing in the sea after dark under a star-filled sky, and the song cycle concludes with "Aerial," which euphorically welcomes the sunrise with the refrain "I need to get up on the roof...in the sun."
The initial release of A Sky of Honey featured Rolf Harris playing the didgeridoo and providing vocals on "An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link." Following Harris' 2014 conviction for indecent assault, his contributions were replaced in the 2018 remaster with new recordings by Bertie McIntosh, Bush's son. Other guest artists on the album include Peter Erskine, Eberhard Weber, Lol Creme, and Gary Brooker of Procol Harum. Michael Kamen, a long-time Bush collaborator, arranged the string sections, which were performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
In 2014, during her "Before the Dawn" concert series in London, Bush performed "King of the Mountain," "Joanni," and the entire "A Sky of Honey" song cycle live for the first time.
Aerial received widespread acclaim from critics. It entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 3 on November 13, 2005, selling 91,473 copies in its first week. Bush was nominated for two BRIT Awards in January 2006 for Best British Female Solo Artist and Best British Album. The album was also nominated for a South Bank Show Award but lost to Richard Hawley's Coles Corner. UK music magazine Mojo named it their third-best album of 2005, behind Antony and the Johnsons' I Am a Bird Now and Arcade Fire's Funeral. The Times' Rob Chapman described the album's closing triptych, "Somewhere in Between," "Nocturn," and "Aerial," as "the most joyous and euphoric finale to an album that you will hear all year." Marcello Carlin of Stylus Magazine called Aerial a "triumph" and praised its ability to "give new life to dead souls."
The only single released from Aerial was "King of the Mountain," which makes references to Elvis Presley and the film Citizen Kane. The track was first played on BBC Radio 2 on September 21, 2005, and made available for download on September 27. The B-side of the single was a 1994 cover of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing," which was not available on any of her albums until its inclusion in the 2018 compilation The Other Sides. "King of the Mountain" entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 4, giving Bush her first top-five hit in twenty years and her third-highest singles chart placement. The song also peaked at No. 6 on the UK Download Chart.
In mid-May 2010, Aerial was released on iTunes for the first time, with the second disc, A Sky of Honey, presented as one continuous track and renamed "An Endless Sky of Honey." The following year, Bush re-released the album and her other studio albums through her label, Fish People. In 2018, the album was remastered, and the original nine tracks of A Sky of Honey were reinstated, with Bertie McIntosh's contributions replacing those of Rolf Harris.
In popular culture, a sequence from the song "π" was featured in the twenty-sixth-season finale of The Simpsons, titled "Mathlete's Feat," which aired on May 17, 2015.
