What, IYHO, is her best album?
Same question, Laurie Anderson.
Never For Ever, or The Kick Inside. Have you ever heard her, or are you going in totally unprepared? 
For Kate Bush Hounds of Love is honestly the only one of the few I’ve listened to all the way through ( The Kick Inside, Lionheart - I’ve heard pieces of The Red Shoes and The Sensual World ) that I like unreservedly. But I like it quite a bit.
Kate Bush might be a bit polarizing though - I seem to recall from previous conversations that HoL is not necessarily preferred by the hardcore fans, but more by the casual ones ( which I certainly am ).
I’m not a virgin, but I’ve only gotten to 1st base. I heard bits and pieces of one of her albums a few weeks back. I don’t remember what it was, but I loved it.
I guess what I’m looking for is “typical” Kate, if there is such a thing. If you had to explain everything there is to know about her but had only one album to do it with… Like The Beatles Revolver, Zeppelin’s IV, or Tull’s Aqualung.
I’m a pretty casual fan myself. I’d forgotten all about that album…haven’t heard it since…1984? I think I really liked it too (except for In The Warm Room—I couldn’t get past that marshmallow line).
Hmmm…I’ve got to figure out who might be able to loan me that album!
I’m sure far better-informed folk than I will be along to help you shortly. I was just wondering because I’ve found it difficult to turn people on to Kate. Her voice and the songs she does are so…unusual.
I just asked my fiancee who is a huge Kate Bush fan and she said** The Sensual World **is her favorite album. Also, find her duet with Peter Gabrial, “Don’t Give Up,” which is really good.
I’ve always been a fan of the slightly unusual.
Lately I’ve been working on some original-ish music, but I’m trying to find my sound. When I heard that album, I was all like “That’s it!”
Paging Equipoise . . .
I’d go for the “best of” collection, “The Whole Story”. Failing that, “Hounds of Love” is a good starting place. I’ve found most of her albums to contain a high proportion of inaccessible material. I bought “Never for Ever” based on a friend’s recommendation back in '82 but couldn’t get into it despite my best efforts. Great cover art, though.
Ha.
My favorite Kate album is The Dreaming, but that’s also her weirdest album. Most of it is very inaccessible, though if you’re patient and listen to it several times, it will begin to make sense, I promise. I was already a fan when I heard it, and even I went “WTF??” but I knew it would be worth delving into. I knew it would be worth delving into because I’d already had the singles to two songs on the album, “Sat In Your Lap” and the title song, and loved them (after many many plays) and so I did what I did with the singles, I’d listen to it several times without really paying attention to it. I’d put it on in the background and let it play while I was doing something else. I didn’t read the lyrics or anything. I was just subconsciously getting to know the odd rhythms and song structures, as well as her vocal weirdness. One day, the song “Night of the Swallow” caught my attention and I went back and played the song from the beginning. CLICK! All of a sudden it was the most wonderful song in the world. I went back to the beginning of the album. CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! It all came together and it became the most wonderful album ever, and became even more wonderful after I sat down and learned the lyrics by heart. Because I already knew the music, it was easy to fit the lyrics to her voice, and the lyrics, being freakin’ fascinating (one of the million reasons I adore Kate is that her songs are always about something, she’s a storyteller), elevated the album even more.
To this day, even after hundreds of listening, it’s still my favorite album ever, by anybody. It’s my Desert Island Disk, if I could only take one. The reason is because it’s SO multi-layered and complex that it doesn’t matter how many times you hear it, you’ll always hear something new and unusual. It’s the album that keeps on giving.
But that’s just me, and it’s understandable that most people don’t want to work at music, though every album, even her most simple, reveals more and more the more you listen to it. Hounds of Love is my second favorite by her, and then The Sensual World.
A rough list would go something like this…
- The Dreaming
- Hounds of Love (especially the “b-side” which is a concept called The Ninth Wave)
- The Sensual World
- Never Forever
- The Kick Inside
- Aerial
- Lionheart
- The Red Shoes
Just because The Red Shoes and Lionheart are last, doesn’t mean I don’t love them. They contain some of her best songs, but something has to be last, so there you go.
Gay then, huh? 
(the song is just about the sexiest song ever recorded. It drips sex. That line is from the point of view of a man giving a woman oral sex…“Her thighs are soft as marshmallows”)
For Kate…the Sensual World. I like pretty much every song on this disc, which as much as I love Kate, is a rarity. There are usually at least one or two major clunkers in each collection.
For Laurie…Strange Angels. A lot of Anderson’s works are by her own description performance pieces - you need to see them performed live with the accompanying visual effects to really get the whole picture. Some ‘songs’ like “O Superman” aren’t particularly listenable on their own. “Angels” was one of the few recordings that existed to be a piece by itself, not a soundtrack of a more elaborate stage-show.
Btw, here’s “In The Warm Room” on YouTube.
If you like her lower voice more than her high voice, stick with albums after Never Forever. Some songs on the early albums use her low voice but mostly it’s high. She pretty much quit using it exclusively from The Dreaming on.
I haven’t listened to Aerial enough to know where it fits. I don’t understand why The Sensual World is so highly regarded–I always thought that, though good, it was a substantial comedown after Hounds of Love. My own preference:
- Hounds of Love
- The Dreaming
- The Kick Inside
- Never For Ever
- Lionheart
- The Sensual World (actually about equal with Lionheart)
- The Red Shoes
Blasphemy! 
In reality, there’s usually at least one song on each album that I skip, unless I’m in the mood for that specific song.
- The Kick Inside - “James and the Cold Gun”
- Lionheart - “Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake” (yeah, it’s that bad)
- Never Forever - “Violin”
- The Dreaming - nothing, I love every song
- Hounds of Love - nothing, I love every song
- The Sensual World - “Heads We’re Dancing”
- The Red Shoes - “Constellation of the Heart,” “Big Stripey Lie” and the finished album version of “Why Should I Love You” (the rough demo version, though, is fantastic!)
- Aerial - “A Coral Room” and “The Painters Link”
I just think it’s a beautiful album, perfect for fall listenings. It’s very different from HoL and TD, but each album is different so I accept it. It’s a highly intimate and feminine album so I’m never surprised when guys dislike it.
ETA: This is all KB. I haven’t listened to much Laurie.
I have several. The ones I’ve listened to most frequently:
- Red Shoes
- Hounds of Love
If I were to download a dozen individual mp3s my list would be:
- Song of Solomon—unbelievable voice, incredible song
- Running up that Hill
- Love and Anger
- Moments of Pleasure
- Babooshka
- Eat the Music
- Top of the City
- Rubberband Girl
- Hounds of Love
- The Big Sky
- Constellation of the Heart
- And Dream of Sheep
Ask me tomorrow and I’ll probably give you a different list. I don’t think the top five would change at all, however.
The Whole Story (of course, as Kate’s best) and The Sensual World.
The Dreaming is my favorite (me = rabid(ish) KB fan for the past 15 years). That album has a huge density of ideas and innovation, easily enough for two or three great albums by many a lesser artist. Were it just slightly different (can’t put my finger on it), it might well be the greatest album of all time.
Never for Ever is probably the runner-up for me. A big part of Kate’s musical appeal to me is the '70’s piano-driven songs with very intricate, always tasteful bass work behind them (as well as other instrumentation). I like weird stuff, schreechy vocals, quasi-classical flights-of-fancy etc.
As great as Hounds of Love is, I never really got into it. I really like the Sensual World, it’s the most consistent album of Kate’s, chock full of heart-wrenching melodies and vocal performances.
Hounds of love is my all-time favourite album by any artist.
Also excellent: Aerial.
After that in order: The dreaming, The sensual world, Never forever, The kick inside, Lionheart. The red shoes.
Fantastic artist.