Music Babble

Have you checked Amazon? There are LOADS of glowing, long-winded five-star gush-reviews of Aerial. Critics were very kind to it too--only a couple of duffer reviews among the 23 or so I read on Metacritic. I could check the album out again in a year.
I wonder if anyone who knew nothing about Kate Bush or the album's circumstances would be able to guess when it was released. It's also occurring to me that 2005 was eighteen f***ing years ago, but I always talk like that don't I?

Collab with Elton John? Did he LIKE her "Candle In The Wind"? I didn't.
I agree with all the male collaborators but doesn't Patti Smith have her beat in that department? (Lenny Kaye, Tom Verlaine, Fred Sonic Smith, etc.) Or no? Those aren't "establishment" rockers though. And Kate, her early work in particular, is far more "feminine" right? I figured her "feminism" would have amounted mostly to sensuality (which she owns herself, I guess) rather than political stuff. She and Patti come from different intellectual traditions too.