Aerial (album)
2005 studio album by Kate Bush
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 charted in twenty-two countries, peaking at number three in the UK.
Overview
Aerial, Bush's first double album, was released after a twelve-year absence from the music industry during which Bush devoted her time to family and the raising of her son, Bertie. The anticipation leading up to the album's release was immense, with press articles devoted to Bush being printed months, even years before. Like Bush's previous album, The Red Shoes, Aerial does not feature a cover photograph of Bush, but rather one that is emblematic of the album's celebration of sky, sea, and birdsong. The cover image, which seems to show a mountain range at sunset reflected on the sea is in fact a waveform of a blackbird song superimposed over 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 1985's Hounds of Love, the album 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 based on the story of Joan of Arc named "Joanni".
“Aerial (album)” enters the record as 2005 studio album by Kate Bush. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Aerial, album and studio can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q381119. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005, 1993 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aerial (album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.