Aerial, was Bush's first double album, 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.
The album regards today as one of Bush's most critically acclaimed albums. Musically, the album was 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, featured 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". In the song "", Bush sings the number to its 78th decimal place, then from its 101st to its 137th decimal place. The piano and vocal piece "A Coral Room", dealing with the loss of Bush's mother and the passage of time, was hailed by critics as "stunning" in its simplicity. "profoundly moving" and as "one of the most beautiful" pieces Bush has ever recorded.
The second disc, subtitled A Sky of Honey, consisted of a single piece of music reveling in the experience of outdoor adventures on a single summer day, beginning in the morning and ending twenty-four hours later with the next sunrise. The songs were saturated with the presence of birdsong, and all refer to the sky and sunlight, with the sea also featured as an important element. Beginning with blackbirds singing in the dawn chorus, a woodpigeon cooing, solo piano, and Bush's son saying, "Mummy, Daddy, the day is full of birds," the piece begins with an early morning awakening to a beautiful day of sun shining "like the light in Italy"; it proceeded through a visit with a painter who is working on a new piece of pavement art "An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link") and then passes on to a crimson "Sunset". The interlude "Aerial Tal", consists of Bush imitating various samples of birdsong, while "Somewhere in Between" celebrated the ambiguous nature of dusk. "Nocturn", features a pair of lovers bathing in the sea after dark under a star-studded "diamond sky". The song cycle ended with "Aerial" and its euphoric welcome of the following morning's sunrise with the refrain "I need to be up on the roof...in the sun."
In the album's initial release, A Sky of Honey featured Rolf Harris playing the didgeridoo and providing vocals on "An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link". Following Harris' 2014 conviction for indecent assault, his vocals were replaced on the 2018 remaster with new recordings by Bertie McIntosh. Other guest artists included Peter Erskine, Eberhard Weber, Lol Creme and Procol Harum's Gary Brooker. In one of his final projects before his death in 2003, long-time Bush collaborator Michael Kamen arranged the string sections, performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
Aerial was nominated for two BRIT Awards for Best British Female Solo Artist and Best British Album and critics aplauded the record caused represents the most joyous and euphoric finale to an album that you will hear all year, a triumph, a towering dual masterpiece arriving like a huge galleon into the shallow pool of enforced worthiness and happiness which defined that era’s pop.
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