“Oh to Be in Love” is the 9th song off of Kate Bush’s debut album The Kick Inside. The meaning is plain: Kate is exulting the state of being in love. I find this song to be rapturous, and I particularly love the various aspects of physical and temporal transition in it, going from one state to another, not just shifting across the floor but from the past to the present and the potential of the future even if it is by way of “slipping into tomorrow too quick.” Interesting that the clock has to stop in order to let the singer and the singer’s loved one to another place vaguely defined–by time? by geography? by…?

A hallmark of this song is the chanting male backing vocals. I’m thinking that this was the first time Kate used this variety of bvs but not the last, see also “Kashka From Baghdad,” “All We Ever Look For,” “Pull Out the Pin,” etc. There is something very “olde” about this male chanting, and I wonder if it is a vestige of Roman Catholic liturgical chanting rearing up out of Kate’s past.