Kate Bush is an example of an artist who stands firmly against how we all digest media today. She is still fairly well known in Britain and was one of its top recording artists and innovators long before Stranger Things launched “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” into annoying meme territory in 2022. Kate was certainly a major force in UK music in the late-70s and 1980s. The TikTok fanatics of today regularly ask why she is no longer constantly in headlines, touring, talked about, etc. It has actually been decades since Kate engaged in that type of publicity for promotional purposes. From about 1978 to 1982, Kate was a tabloid sensation in Britain—a huge “star” in many respects. And then, she pulled the plug on all of that because it never interested her a bit in the least. Kate has never seemed to be interested in touring the world, and that is likely why she never made it big in America, and likely also because her music was far too cerebral for the consumerist mechanical animals of the States. She is a British Laurie Anderson in many ways, and while RUTH remains a masterpiece of moody pop to this day, her fans know she is so much more than that song’s chorus.
Kate Bush is—and I mean this in the most tactful way—a thinking person’s popular musician. Her artistry is imaginative, bold, theatrical, otherworldly, raw, emotional, and truthful. It can make many casual listeners either confounded or even uncomfortable in how she often creates soundscapes and stories that strike at the most intimate and closely guarded aspects of the human experience. She is a singularity in how she literally probes the fantastical depths of her mind and manages to convey all of this in her lyrics, sounds, and highly versatile vocal deliveries. Then there are the visuals, which are an entirely separate canon of creativity. She can be calm and mind-blowingly seductive in one song and then appear like an apparition on hallucinogenic drugs from another planet in the next. She also pulls all of this off without an ounce of pretentiousness or affected subversiveness—she just puts you in a trance that is uniquely spellbinding and beguiling. And then it just becomes even more unbelievable once you realize that she writes every single word, produces every song (save the first two albums), and every single bit of what she does comes from her solely. So why is she not constantly lauded?
Because she does not and has never played by the industry’s rules and expectations. It is a miracle that she was ever signed to a record deal by a major pop label in the first place. Kate Bush is beyond a mere singer or performer; she is a pure artist, almost as if a novelist, painter, or filmmaker who just happened to be musically gifted decided to start writing songs and recording music when she was a teenager. I believe her wholeheartedly when she claimed in interviews that fame was never important to her and, in fact, repelled her.
After The Dreaming came and went in 1982, Kate returned with Hounds of Love in 1985, and her style drastically changed. She had now bought a home in the countryside and spent a large sum of money to build her own private recording studio on her property. This was intentional in many ways because she was signaling that she was no longer interested in the fame aspect of being a popular recording artist. She kept going with promotional work occasionally, but she began to resist the need to constantly put out material and decided to take her time creating her music. After The Red Shoes in 1993, she vanished from the public eye for 12 years and has maintained a private profile ever since. She now solely exists for her fans who want to engage with her music whenever it comes along. She has no social media or anything we come to expect from people now (certainly famous individuals), and I think it is safe to say this is how she prefers it. So it’s like she always wanted- her public profile exists solely through her fans now. And as much as we adore “Running Up That Hill,” we know that Kate is a preeminent architect of sonically “letting the weirdness in.”
Charles Switzer 