One of England’s most original and widely-admires musical artists, Kate Bush is a true national treasure. But, in a 1993 interview with Britain’s [now defunct] Q magazine, the then-35-year-old singer admitted that one of her most poetic songs about her homeland made her cringe with embarrassment.
Oh England My Lionheart is the closing song on side one of Bush’s second album, Lionheart, released on November 10, 1978, less than nine months on from the release of her million-selling debut album, The Kick Inside. Featuring lyrics such as “Peter Pan steals the kids in Kensington Park / You read me Shakespeare on the rolling Thames“, the song was described by Bush as “a sort of poetical play, if you like, on the romantic visuals of England, and the second World War.”
“It’s only got acoustic instruments on it and it’s done … almost madrigally, you know,” she told Melody Maker‘s Harry Doherty in November ’78. “I dare say a lot of people will think that it’s just a load of old slush but it’s just an area that I think it’s good to cover. Everything I do is very English and I think that’s one reason I’ve broken through to a lot of countries.”
Ffifteen years on, however, Bush was rather less enamoured of the song. When Q writer (now BBC 6Music presenter) Stuart Maconie mentioned it to Bush the singer-songwriter gasped, “Do you like that one? It makes me just want to die. It’s such an old song.”
When Maconie enquired as to which other old songs made Bush wince, she responded, “My God, loads. Absolutely loads.”
“Either the lyric’s not thought out properly or it’s just crap or the performances weren’t well executed,” she continued. “But you have to get it in context. You were doing it at the time and it was the best you could do then. You’ve got to live with it. Some of those early songs though, you think, What was I thinking about? Did I write that?.
“There’s not just one,” she admitted. “There’s too many to mention. But I was very young, so I can be gentle on myself for that. Having said that, I think some of my lyrics were just, well, mad really. And why not! You’ve got to be prepared to fail and get a bit hurt or bruised along the way.”
Oh England My Lionheart (2018 Remaster) – YouTube 
In a 1980 interview with Sounds magazine, Bush revealed that when someone from EMI saw the cover of the Lionheart album, with the singer wearing a lion costume, he informed her that it looked “too sexual”. Bush replied that this was intentional and appropriate, because she’d included a song about bestiality on the record. Cue a record label freak-out, which only eased when Bush burst out laughing and said she was joking.