On Reddit this opinion is incredibly unpopular. Seriously, they absolutely won't discuss whether or not Kate ripped anyone off, they just get mad. They don't question anything Kate does. Her fandom is very cultish and it makes me glad I'm not a fan of her music anymore.
So once again, I will state the facts I already stated on Reddit (which I will never return to again):
Akiko Yano is considered one of the most important musical artists of all time in her home country of Japan. She's known for her distinctive shrill, pixie-ish falsetto and her piano-based fusion compositions of jazz, funk, chamber pop, and synth. Her first album Japanese Girl came out in 1976 and her second Iroha ni Konpeitu in 1977, both before Kate's The Kick Inside in 1978.
Noosha Fox sang with the band Fox, which was a sort of odd hybrid of chamber pop, soft rock, and funk. She had an unusual, heavily accented falsetto and was known for her theatrical performances in flowy 40s diva dresses. Their first album came out in 1975 and their second in 1976, also long before The Kick Inside.
Akiko and Noosha had extremely similar musical content to Kate long before Kate was on the music scene. Before Akiko and Noosha came on the scene, Kate's demos sounded very Carol King. But in 1976, her sound shifted. Suddenly her vocals were shrill and her piano was more theatrical.
Kate even went so far as to openly recreate Akiko's 1977 Iroha ni Konpeitu album cover for her Japanese pressing of the 1979 single Symphony in Blue. (The one with the dolphin and the red jumpsuit.) Also, Kate's 1982 "There Goes A Tenner" sounds shockingly like Noosha's own 1980 composition "Odd, Peculiar, Strange".
Yet what worries me is that she never made mention of these two women although she was influenced by them and sometimes even overtly ripped them off. It's almost like she wanted to take credit as the first woman to make music that sounds like that (art pop namely) and to sing like that.
I'm just fed up that Western music critics often call Akiko the "Japanese Kate Bush" when it's actually the other way around. Kate is the "British Akiko Yano" by their logic.
I'm also fed up with how they treat Kate as an unassailable, unquestionable, unproblematic goddess. I mean c'mon, if Rolling Stone magazine can question whether or not Bowie ripped off Mick Ronson why can't I discuss whether or not a singer far less famous than Bowie ripped off another singer or two? (Heck, I'm not even bringing up my anger towards "The Infant Kiss".)
The truth is that Akiko Yano and Noosha Fox deserve their due. It's just ridiculous that Kate Bush fans and Western media gatekeep her as the one-and-only inventor of art pop. There are more women who made artsy music, you know, before and after Kate, with or without her influence.
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I can't see any frickin difference between them lol
They sound the same too. The only difference is that Akiko was doing it first.
I’m still not sure why it matters?
If you're not interested in this kind of music or if you don't care about plagiarism, then it doesn't matter.
If you like it, that's all that matters.