Reclusive '80s art-rock star Kate Bush is making headlines in 2022, thanks to "Stranger
Things." So how did Bush get her big break? And where did she disappear to? Keep watching
to find out.
It's no surprise to learn that Kate Bush came from a creative family. Her mother, Hannah,
was a devotee of the traditional music of her native Ireland, and would sing and dance at home.
"When I was very little, it was always being played in the house."
According to "Kate Bush: The Biography" by Rob Jovanovic, Bush would dance too, but privately
along to songs that came on the television. Her brother, John, who was 14 years older,
was a prolific poet, who would write continuously and share his verses with his younger sister.
But John didn't just set a creative example for the young Kate Bush. Heading away to college
while Kate was still a small child, John would make vital friendships that would become instrumental
in helping to get his sister's prodigious songwriting talents recognized a decade later,
including with Dave Gilmour, who was soon to become one of the most successful musicians
in the world as part of Pink Floyd.
In 1973, while Gilmour was taking a break from touring and recording with Floyd, John
invited the musician – who was interested in developing his own acts – to come to
the family home and secretly listen to his sister practice her self-written songs on the piano.
Gilmour was impressed enough to begin working with Kate – then better known as "Cathy"
– and worked with her on a professionally-recorded demo, which included the classic song "The
Man with the Child in His Eyes." She was barely 15 years old, but would eventually find herself
signed to EMI on the road to pop stardom. ​
As Kate Bush continued to work on her material, she also spent years in London, where she
took singing lessons and attended courses in dance and mime to broaden her artistic
palette, according to her biography. By 1978, Bush was ready to release her music into the world.
But the world of music had turned dramatically since the heady art rock days of Pink Floyd's
pomp. At the time, the UK was experiencing the aftershocks of the punk explosion the
previous year, with young music fans convinced that pop songwriting could never be the same
again. Punk seemingly imbued all corners of the music industry with a new sense of rebelliousness,
while for lighter-hearted listeners disco was the dancefloor-filling genre of the day.
Bush's debut single, "Wuthering Heights," an eccentric, romantic song of yearning based
on the novel of the same name by Emily Brontë, subverted the landscape, sounding like nothing
else in the pop charts at the time. "I thought it was just perfect material for
a song. It's just so passionate and full of impact."
The song went to No. 1 in the U.K., an instant breakthrough that allowed Bush to release
two full studio albums in the same year to critical acclaim and commercial success.
Despite the immense impact of "Wuthering Heights," Kate Bush's debut single was so confounding
to many music fans and journalists that it was assumed it was nothing more than a strange
novelty single, while Bush herself became a divisive figure among the pop-following public.
It would take years and the release of much more Bush material – culminating perhaps
in her biggest-selling pop album, 1985's "Hounds of Love" – for her enduring artistry to
become undeniable even to those who failed to appreciate her singular pop aesthetic.
But while Bush has grown into a musical icon for pop songwriters everywhere, her importance
for women artists in the U.K. music industry was far more immediate. As highlighted by
the Guardian, "Wuthering Heights" was notable for being the first song by a woman to hit
the top of the singles chart that the artist herself had composed.
The feat may not be attention-grabbing today in the age of heavyweight pop songwriters
like Taylor Swift and Adele, but Bush's breakthrough constituted a highly symbolic moment for women
in the industry.
As Kate Bush's career progressed, it became apparent that she was both a single-minded
experimentalist and a consummate craftswoman, with the technical songwriting and performance
abilities necessary to fulfill her unconventional musical vision.
"I really like what I do, and I think that's what it's all about."
And while Bush's music may appear to be the antithesis of the punk movement it so strongly
contrasted with back in the late 1970s, she came to count among her fans several figures
from punk's ranks, not least the original British punk snarler John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten.
Lydon has been effusive in his praise for Bush in numerous interviews over the years,
including a 2001 interview in which the Sex Pistols frontman noted that both he and Bush
had shared the experience of attracting ire from critics for their unconventional vocal
styles. And even more surprisingly, it has also emerged that Lydon wrote a song for Bush,
hoping that she would perform it. Lydon told Uncut magazine in 2014:
"Years ago, I sent [Bush] a song I'd written. I don't think she understood it. It was called
'Bird In Hand.' It was about the illegal exportation of parrots from South America. No, don't laugh!
It's a serious subject. It's cruel. But I think she thought it was a reference to her,
which it certainly wasn't!"
Bush never recorded the song, though the rejection doesn't seem to have impacted Lydon's admiration
for her. He added,
"She's a wonderful, wonderful woman. Stunningly innovative and creative. One of our finest."
A huge part of Kate Bush's success was her willingness to harness the new medium of music
videos, which were growing in importance as marketing devices and extensions of the songs
themselves in the early years of her career.
From "Wuthering Heights" to 1985's massive single "Running Up That Hill," Bush starred
in some of the most iconic music videos of the period. But it was perhaps the follow-up
to "Running Up That Hill," "Cloudbusting," which best exemplifies the musician's ability
to use all the tools at her disposal to expand her chosen theme.
The video shows Kate Bush in the guise of a young boy, whose father, played by Donald
Sutherland, is an eccentric scientist and inventor of a "cloudbusting" machine who is
arrested, leaving the boy alone.
The story sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but in fact was inspired by the real-life
memoirs of Peter Reich, whose father, the Austrian-born Wilhelm, was a psychoanalyst
who truly believed he had created such a machine. Bush reportedly read Reich's memoir and was
moved by the portrayal of the father-son relationship, inspiring the unusual hit song.
"I think the biggest inspiration is people. I think people are just so inspiring."
When the video was complete, Bush sent a copy to Reich for his approval, who said that he
and his family were "​​entranced" and that Bush had, quote, "tapped precisely into
​a unique and magical fulfillment of father-son devotion, emotion, and understanding," according to Dazed.
Despite enjoying 15 years of considerable commercial success and widespread critical
acclaim, following the release of her album "The Red Shoes" in 1993, by 1994, Kate Bush
largely retreated from the glare of public life.
Soon, her absence from the music industry became tabloid fodder, with newspapers labeling
her a misfit and a recluse and speculating on her mental health and private life. Among
her fans, however, it became the stuff of legend, provoking works of art that attempted
to penetrate her intense privacy.
The 2007 documentary "Come Back Kate" explores the impact her absence had on those who love
her music, while more eccentric projects such as "Waiting for Kate Bush," a book by John
Mendelssohn described as a "hybrid of satirical comic novel and music biography" which, along
with the life story of Kate Bush, offers a fictional story of a super fan attempting
to connect with his missing musical hero.
Bush only made a handful of public appearances during these years before re-emerging in 2005,
with her long-awaited double album "Aerial."
The reclusive singer hadn't turned her back on fame as the result of a nervous breakdown
or strange new creative obsession. As would eventually be revealed, Bush – who, it is
worth recalling, first shot to pop fame at the tender age of 19 – was enjoying living
a normal life of domesticity and parenthood.
News that Bush had become a parent emerged alongside news of her comeback through her
friend Peter Gabriel, who in a 2004 interview told the world:
"Kate had a son and lost her mom and I think that kept her occupied. I spoke to her quite
recently in fact and she's just about finished on a new record. It is exciting. She's being
a mom and loving it. So, if you like, music's gone from being full-time to being part-time,
so that slows you down."
The news that Bush had given birth to a son, Bertie, only appeared in print some five years
after the child's birth, per the Evening Standard.
In an interview with the Guardian, Bush explained that she valued learning the mundane necessities
of domestic life, such as vacuuming and doing laundry, saying that she felt "privileged"
that she had been able to carve out a normal life for herself and her family despite her fame.
Think of your favorite singer, and you also probably know who their favorite singer is,
too. For Paul McCartney, no one beats Little Richard. For David Bowie, vocal inspiration
came from avant-garde crooner Scott Walker. And Adele has made no secret of the fact that
her great hero is the classic blues singer Etta James.
So it might be expected that Kate Bush would similarly wear her influences when it comes
to vocalists proudly on her sleeve. But perhaps unsurprisingly, Bush gave a rather unusual
answer when asked this common music press interview question, telling an interviewer
in 1996 that her favorite singer was the blackbird. Her second favorite? The thrush.
Bush's love of the blackbird is apparent on her 2005 comeback album "Aerial," which features
as part of its album art the waveform of a blackbird's song, as well as recordings of
birdsong throughout the album.
Though Kate Bush continued to keep press appearances to a minimum, in 2016 she was driven to share
her thoughts on two artists whose deaths deeply affected millions: David Bowie, who died in
January of that year, and Prince, who died in April.
Bush had been a lifelong Bowie admirer, having witnessed him performing live in his seminal
final concert in the guise of Ziggy Stardust, according to Mojo. Speaking to the Guardian
in the aftermath of Bowie's death, Bush praised the "Starman" singer, saying,
"He was intelligent, imaginative, brave, charismatic, cool, sexy, and truly inspirational both visually
and musically."
Similarly, Bush was quick to pay tribute to Prince, whom she had collaborated with on
her 1993 album "Blood Red Shoes." A statement published on Bush's official website read:
"He was such an inspiration. Playful and mind-blowingly gifted. He was the most inventive and extraordinary
live act I've seen. The world has lost someone truly magical. Goodnight dear Prince."
Elsewhere, Bush praised his playfulness and sweet character, as well as his incredible
productivity in contrast to the slow process of her own songwriting.
Though Kate Bush has continued to keep projects to a minimum in recent decades, there have
nevertheless been some moments when the English songwriter has come to dominate the cultural zeitgeist.
One such moment occurred in 2014, when Bush, who had not performed on stage for 35 years
by that point, announced that she would perform a 22-date London residency, titled "Before
the Dawn," tickets for which reportedly sold out in 15 minutes. Rolling Stone later described
the shows as a "spectacular" return to live performance.
But another more unexpected Kate Bush moment occurred as recently as 2022, when — spoiler
alert! — the singer's seminal 1985 single "Running Up That Hill" was featured heavily
in the fourth season of the 1980s-set Netflix horror drama "Stranger Things."
The prominence of the song on the hit series – the script for which Bush read personally
before giving clearance for her song's use – made the song an unexpected summer smash,
sending it to the top of the iTunes chart in both the U.K. and the U.S., and launching
it up the Billboard Hot 100. Billboard reports that over the course of the final week of
May, Spotify plays for the song in the U.S. rose by around 9,900%.
"You're a Kate Bush fan?"
“Uh, yeah. Now I am!"
"Really?"
"Yeah, megafan."
On her website, Bush thanked her fans and wrote that she loves the show, calling it
"fantastic" and "gripping," adding, "I wait with bated breath for the rest of the series
in July."
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