Living, loss, lust and connection: Five albums that explore love and relationships
Kate Bush, pictured in 1980: tapped into loneliness, obsession and passion for 'Hounds of Love'
For English musician and singer-songwriter Kate Bush, tapping into obsession, loneliness and passion while writing every aspect of her fifth album in a self-built studio led to a creative reckoning, critical acclaim, and a commercial comeback.
While the album is front-loaded with classics of the eighties crossover between pop and progressive rock, like 'Running Up That Hill' and its title track, its b-side holds a whole standalone suite of songs known as 'The Ninth Wave', a vision quest by way of poetry, sonic textures and internal tumult.
The rest is history, and despite some of the then-weekly rock mags not quite knowing what to make of its scope and experimentation, 'Hounds of Love' helped cement Bush's artistic legacy.
Though UK folk-pop duo Everything But the Girl had been active since 1982, massive mainstream success must have taken them by surprise with the 1995 re-release of their single 'Missing', accompanied by a pensive remix and re-arrangement courtesy of Brooklyn house producer Todd Terry.
While the (slightly) more up-tempo fix-up swept from dancefloors to specialist press to a level of radio and chart dominance unimaginable in current, more fragmented times, the original 'Missing' is a haunting gateway into an album that explores relationships, longing and regret very much from the inside. It was written and produced by Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, a long-married couple.
While mainstream listeners might have written the duo off as a one-hit-wonder, 'Amplified Heart' was a moment of visibility near the end of a long and distinguished body of work for Everything But the Girl before becoming inactive in 2000, citing a dislike for live performance and each opting to release numerous solo records in the intervening years.
Not everyone would add one of the breakout metal bands of the late '90s to their love playlists, but California five-piece Deftones have long outlasted their peers by moving forward, and paying attention to a wider frame of musical influence.
Released in 2010, and recorded in the aftermath of a car accident from which bassist Chi Cheng would never recover, 'Diamond Eyes' races with the vitality of human beings that are in a rush to document that epiphany about the fleeting nature of life, the importance of living in the moment.
And that includes love and lust: 'Sextape' moves with a gentle, idyllic sway, 'Beauty School' dives headlong into the band's love of eighties shoegaze, while 'You've Seen the Butcher' just slithers along, revelling and wallowing in its single-entendres.
One of the more successful alumni of the genre-changing Odd Future collective, US rapper and producer Tyler, the Creator has done much over the last decade to reshape perceptions of hip-hop on many levels, with a playful yet detailed approach to sampling and arrangement.
Having confronted his sexuality and the demands of his lifestyle as a public figure in the sprawling 'Scum F**k Flower Boy' long-player, the stage was set in 2019 for him to unleash his opus: an intense, heady but absolutely heartfelt concept album about a messy, bisexual love triangle.
It's as weird as the outer limits of major-label hip-hop allows, yet speaks to those universally familiar rushes of attraction, longing, jealousy, differences and the inevitable break-up with an undeniable joy. An album to love and relish for every second of its running time.
For English singer-songwriter Marika Hackman, any established idea of a 'difficult third album' was blown out of the water by 2019's 'Any Human Friend', a treatise on connection, longing and sex that did away with her folk roots in favour of clever, retro-tinged alt-rock.
It's driven by a shocking and compelling lyrical honesty that runs the gamut from a dislike of rock 'n' roll's tiresome patriarchy, and the joys of, eh, self-love ('Hand Solo'), to a frankness surrounding lesbian sexuality that completely inverts the wider rock genre's heteronormative tropes ('All Night', 'Come Undone').
Utterly unconcerned with outside opinion of its themes and lyrical explorations, and laden with smart hooks throughout, it's a rowdy and raucous listen.
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