1958–1972: Early life Bush was born on 30 July 1958 at a maternity hospital in
Bexleyheath, Kent, to an English doctor,
general practitioner Robert Bush (1920–2008), and Hannah Patricia (née Daly) (1918–1992), an Irish staff nurse, daughter of a farmer in
County Waterford. She grew up with her elder brothers, John and Paddy, in an over 350-year-old Bush came from an artistic background: her mother was an amateur traditional
Irish dancer, her father was an amateur pianist, Paddy worked as a musical instrument maker, and John was a poet and photographer. Both brothers were involved in the local
folk music scene. She was brought up a
Roman Catholic. Bush trained at
Goldsmiths College karate club, where her brother John was a karate instructor. There, she became known as "Ee-ee" because of her squeaky
kiai. Her family's musical influence inspired Bush to teach herself the piano at the age of 11. She also played the organ in a barn behind her parents' house and studied the violin. She soon began composing songs, eventually adding her own lyrics. Impressed, Gilmour financed the 16-year-old Bush's recording of a more professional demo tape. The tape consisted of three tracks, produced by Gilmour's friend
Andrew Powell and the sound engineer
Geoff Emerick, who had worked with
the Beatles. Powell later produced Bush's first two albums. The British record industry was reaching a point of stagnation. EMI gave Bush a large advance, which she used to enroll in
interpretive dance classes taught by
Lindsay Kemp, a former teacher of
David Bowie, and mime training with
Adam Darius. For the first two years of her contract, Bush spent more time on schoolwork than recording. She left school after doing her mock
A-Levels and having gained ten
GCE O-Level qualifications. From March to August 1977, she fronted the KT Bush Band at public houses in London. The band included
Del Palmer (bass), Brian Bath (guitar) and Vic King (drums). She began recording her first album in August 1977. Her brother Paddy played the harmonica and mandolin.
Stuart Elliott played some of the drums and became her main drummer on subsequent albums.
The Kick Inside was released when Bush was 19, and includes some songs written when she was as young as 13. EMI originally wanted the more rock-oriented track "James and the Cold Gun" to be her debut single, but Bush, who already had a reputation for asserting herself in decisions about her work, insisted that it should be "
Wuthering Heights". The outside version sees Bush dancing in a grassy area on
Salisbury Plain (inspired by the novel's
moors) whilst wearing a red dress. In the United Kingdom alone,
The Kick Inside sold over a million copies. "
The Man with the Child in His Eyes" made it onto the US
Billboard Hot 100 where it reached number 85 in early 1979, and went on to win her an
Ivor Novello Award in 1979 for Outstanding British Lyric. According to
Guinness World Records, Bush was the first female artist in pop history to have written every track on a million-selling debut album. Bush set up her own publishing company, Kate Bush Music, and her own management company, Novercia, to maintain control of her work. The board of directors comprised members of her family, along with Bush herself.
The Tour of Life began in April 1979 and lasted six weeks. It was described by
The Guardian as "an extraordinary,
hydra-headed beast, combining music, dance, poetry, mime,
burlesque, magic and theatre". Bush was involved in every aspect of the production, choreography, set design, costume design and hiring. Bush's first experience as a producer was on her live
On Stage EP, released in August 1979.
1980–1984: Never for Ever and The Dreaming Released in September 1980,
Never for Ever was Bush's second foray into production, co-producing with
Jon Kelly. The first two albums had resulted in a definitive sound evident in every track, with orchestral arrangements supporting the live band sound. The range of styles on
Never for Ever is much more diverse, veering from the straightforward rocker "Violin" to the wistful waltz of hit single "
Army Dreamers".
Never for Ever was her first album to feature
synthesisers and
drum machines, in particular the
Fairlight CMI. She was introduced to the technology while providing backing vocals on
Peter Gabriel's eponymous
third album in early 1980. In November 1980, she released the standalone
Christmas single "
December Will Be Magic Again", which reached No. 29 in the UK charts. September 1982 saw the release of
The Dreaming, the first album Bush produced by herself. With her new-found freedom, she experimented with production techniques, creating an album that features a diverse blend of musical styles and is known for its near-exhaustive use of the Fairlight CMI.
The Dreaming received a mixed reception in the UK, and critics were baffled by the dense soundscapes Bush had created to become "less accessible". In a 1993 interview with
Q magazine, Bush stated: "That was my 'She's gone mad' album." but is to date her lowest-selling album, garnering "only" a silver disc. The album became her first to enter the US
Billboard 200 chart, albeit only reaching No. 157. "
Sat in Your Lap" was the first single from the album to be released. It preceded the album by over a year and peaked at No. 11 in the UK. while the third single, "
There Goes a Tenner", stalled at No. 93, despite promotion from EMI and Bush. The track "
Suspended in Gaffa" was released as a single in Europe, but not in the UK. Continuing in her storytelling tradition, Bush looked far outside her own personal experience for sources of inspiration. She drew on old crime films for "There Goes a Tenner", a documentary about the
Vietnam War for "Pull Out the Pin", and the plight of
Indigenous Australians for "The Dreaming". "Houdini" is about
that magician's death, and "Get Out of My House" was inspired by
Stephen King's novel
The Shining.
1985–1988: Hounds of Love and The Whole Story Hounds of Love was released in 1985. Because of the high cost of hiring studio space for her previous album, she built a private studio near her home, where she could work at her own pace.
Hounds of Love topped the charts in the UK, knocking
Madonna's
Like a Virgin from the number-one position. The album takes advantage of the vinyl and cassette formats with two very different sides. The first side,
Hounds of Love, contains five "accessible" pop songs, including the four singles "
Running Up That Hill", "
Cloudbusting", "
Hounds of Love" and "
The Big Sky". "Running Up That Hill" reached No. 3 in the UK charts and re-introduced Bush to American listeners, climbing to No. 30 on the
Billboard Hot 100 in November 1985. Bush has stated that she initially wanted to name the song "A Deal With God", but the record company was reluctant because some people might think it was "a sensitive title", but that "... for me, this is still called A Deal With God". The second side of the album,
The Ninth Wave, takes its name from
Tennyson's poem "
Idylls of the King", about the legendary
King Arthur's reign, and is seven interconnecting songs joined in one continuous piece of music. The album earned Bush nominations for Best Female Solo Artist, Best Album, Best Single and Best Producer at the 1986
Brit Awards. In the same year, Bush and Peter Gabriel had a UK Top 10 hit with the duet "
Don't Give Up",
Dolly Parton, Gabriel's original choice to sing the female vocal, turned his offer down. EMI released Bush's "greatest hits" album,
The Whole Story. Bush provided a new lead vocal and refreshed backing track on "Wuthering Heights", and recorded a new single, "
Experiment IV", for inclusion on the compilation.
Dawn French and
Hugh Laurie were among those featured in the video for Experiment IV. At the
1987 Brit Awards, Bush won the award for Best British Female Solo Artist. One of the tracks, "Heads We're Dancing", inspired by her own
black humour, is about a woman who dances all night with a charming stranger only to discover in the morning that he is
Adolf Hitler. The
title track drew its inspiration from
James Joyce's novel
Ulysses.
The Sensual World went on to become her biggest-selling album in the US, receiving an RIAA Gold certification four years after its release for 500,000 copies sold. In the United Kingdom album charts, it reached the number-two position. Another single from the album, "
This Woman's Work", was featured in the
John Hughes film ''
She's Having a Baby'', and a slightly remixed and reworked version appeared on Bush's album
The Sensual World. The song reached number-eight in 2005 on the UK download chart after featuring in a British television advertisement for the charity
NSPCC. In 1990, the boxed set ''
This Woman's Work'' was released; it included all of her albums with their original cover art, as well as two discs featuring the majority of her singles' B-sides recorded from 1978 to 1990. In 1991, Bush released a cover of
Elton John's "
Rocket Man", which reached number 12 on the UK singles chart, and reached number two in Australia. In 2007, it was voted by readers of
The Observer newspaper as the greatest ever cover version. Another John cover, "
Candle in the Wind", was the B-side. In the same year, she starred in the black comedy film
Les Dogs, produced by
The Comic Strip for
BBC television. Bush plays the bride Angela at a wedding set in a post-apocalyptic Britain. Bush's seventh studio album,
The Red Shoes, was released in November 1993. The album gave Bush her highest chart position in the US, reaching number 28, although the only song from the album to make the US singles chart was "Rubberband Girl", which peaked at number 88 in January 1994. In the UK, the album reached number-two, and the singles "Rubberband Girl", "The Red Shoes", "Moments of Pleasure" and "
And So Is Love" (featuring
Eric Clapton on guitar) all reached the top 30. Bush directed and starred in the short film
The Line, the Cross and the Curve, which featured music from her album
The Red Shoes, itself inspired by
the 1948 film of that name. It was released on VHS in the UK in 1994 and also received a small number of cinema screenings around the world. The initial plan had been to tour behind the release of
The Red Shoes, but this idea was abandoned. Thus, Bush deliberately produced her tracks live, with less studio production that had typified her last three albums and which would have been too difficult to re-create on stage. The result polarised her fan base, who had enjoyed the intricacy of her earlier compositions, with other fans claiming they had found new complexities in the lyrics and the emotions they expressed. During this period Bush suffered a series of bereavements, including the loss of guitarist
Alan Murphy, who had begun working with her on The Tour of Life in 1979, and her mother Hannah, to whom she was exceptionally close.
1994–2006: Motherhood, hiatus and Aerial After the release of
The Red Shoes, Bush dropped out of the public eye. She had originally intended to take one year off, but despite working on material, twelve years passed before her next album release. Her name occasionally cropped up in the media with rumours of a new album release. The press often viewed her as an eccentric recluse, sometimes drawing a comparison with
Miss Havisham from
Charles Dickens's
Great Expectations. In 1998, Bush gave birth to Albert, known as "Bertie", fathered by guitarist Dan McIntosh, whom she met in 1992. In 2002, she was awarded an
Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and performed "
Comfortably Numb" at David Gilmour's concert at the
Royal Festival Hall in London. Bush's eighth studio album,
Aerial, was released on double CD and vinyl in November 2005. The single entered the UK Downloads Chart at number six, and would become Bush's third-highest-charting single ever in the UK, peaking at number four on the full chart. and the US chart at number 48.
Aerial, like
Hounds of Love (1985), is divided into two sections, each with its own theme and mood. The first disc, subtitled
A Sea of Honey, features a set of unrelated themed songs, including "King of the Mountain"; "Bertie", a Renaissance-style ode to her son; and "Joanni", based on the story of
Joan of Arc. In the song "π", Bush sings 117 digits of the number
pi. The second disc, subtitled
A Sky of Honey, features one continuous piece of music describing the experience of 24 hours passing by.
Aerial earned Bush two nominations at the
2006 Brit Awards, for Best British Female Solo Artist and Best British Album. and was nominated for the
International Press Academy's
Satellite Award for original song in a motion picture. According to Del Palmer, Bush was asked to compose the song at short notice; the project was completed in 10 days. In May 2011, Bush released ''
Director's Cut,
comprising 11 reworked tracks from The Sensual World
and The Red Shoes'', recorded using analogue rather than digital equipment. All the tracks have new lead vocals, drums and instrumentation. Some were transposed to a lower key to accommodate her lowering voice. Three of the songs, including "
This Woman's Work", have been completely rerecorded, often with lyrics changed in places. Bush described the album as a new project rather than a collection of remixes. It was the first album on her new label, Fish People, a division of EMI Records. In addition to ''Director's Cut
in its single CD form, the album was released with a box-set that contains the albums The Sensual World
and the analogue re-mastered The Red Shoes''. It debuted at No. 2 on the United Kingdom chart. Bush's tenth studio album,
50 Words for Snow, was released on 21 November 2011. It features
Elton John in the duet "Snowed in at Wheeler Street". The album contains seven new songs "set against a backdrop of falling snow", with a total running time of 65 minutes. The album's songs are built around Bush's quietly jazzy piano and
Steve Gadd's drums, and use both sung and spoken word vocals in what
Classic Rock critic Stephen Dalton calls "a ... supple and experimental affair, with a contemporary chamber pop sound grounded in crisp piano, minimal percussion and light-touch electronics ... billowing jazz-rock soundscapes, interwoven with fragmentary narratives delivered in a range of voices from shrill to
Laurie Anderson-style cooing". Bassist
Danny Thompson appears on the album, while the sixth track on the album, "50 Words for Snow", features the voice of
Stephen Fry reciting a list of words to describe snow.
50 Words for Snow received general acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 88, based on 26 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". At the
2012 Brit Awards she was nominated in the Best Female Artist category, and the album won the 2012 Best Album at the South Bank Arts Awards, and was also nominated for Best Album at the Ivor Novello Awards. Bush turned down an invitation to perform at the
2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London. Instead, a new vocal remix of her 1985 single "Running Up That Hill" was played. In 2013, Bush became the only female artist to have top five albums in the UK charts in five successive decades.
2014–2021: Before the Dawn and remastered catalogue at
Hammersmith Apollo in London in September 2014 In March 2014, Bush announced her first live concerts in decades:
Before the Dawn, a 22-night residency in London running from 26 August to 1 October 2014 at the
Hammersmith Apollo. Tickets sold out in 15 minutes. The concerts received universal acclaim. An album of recordings from the concerts,
Before the Dawn, was released on 25 November 2016. Bolstered by publicity around
Before the Dawn, Bush became the first female performer to have eight albums in the UK Top 40 Albums Chart simultaneously, putting her at number three for simultaneous UK Top 40 albums. The only artists ahead of Bush were
Elvis Presley, who had 12 entries in the top 40 after his death in 1977, and the Beatles who had 11 in 2009. She had 11 albums in the top 50. In a statement, Bush said, On 6 December 2018, Bush published her first book,
How to Be Invisible, a compilation of lyrics. In November 2018, Bush released two box sets of remasters of her studio albums. Vocals from
Rolf Harris, who was convicted of multiple sexual assault charges in 2014, were replaced with versions by Bush's son Bertie. A compilation of rare tracks, cover versions and remixes from the boxsets,
The Other Sides, was released on 8 March 2019. It includes the previously unreleased track "Humming", recorded in 1975. In September 2019, Bush released "" / "" on vinyl, in France, as a limited-edition promotional single. In September 2020, Bush became a Fellow of
The Ivors Academy, the UK's independent professional association for songwriters, composers and music authors. Following Bush's award, another Fellow,
Annie Lennox, commented, "She is visionary and iconic and has made her own magical stamp upon the zeitgeist of the British cultural landscape."
Winona Ryder, who played the character
Joyce Byers in
Stranger Things, said she had pushed for the song to be on the show: "I've been obsessed with her since I was a little girl. I've also for the last seven years been dropping hints on set wearing my Kate Bush T-shirts." According to
The Guardian, "Running Up That Hill" has become particularly popular with members of
Generation Z, who were not born when the song was first released, and it has appeared in numerous videos on the social media platform
TikTok. Bush released a statement praising
Stranger Things and saying the resurgence was "really exciting." It was the most popular track of the week in the UK, ahead of "
As It Was" by
Harry Styles, but a pre-existing chart rule penalised older songs that are streamed. The Chart Supervisory Committee responded by giving the record an exemption from the "accelerated chart ratio" rule due to its ongoing sales resurgence. On 17 June, the song reached number one in the UK, making it Bush's second UK number one. It broke three UK chart records in the process. With 44 years since her last number one, "Wuthering Heights" in 1978, Bush surpassed
Tom Jones's 42-year gap between number ones and replaced
Cher as the oldest female solo chart-topping artist at 63 years and 11 months. Bush also achieved the record for a single with the longest period taken to reach number one, beating the previous record, held by "
Last Christmas" by
Wham!, by a year. On 11 June 2022, "Running Up That Hill" re-entered the US
Billboard Hot 100 at number eight, surpassing its 1985 peak at No 30 and becoming Bush's first US top-ten hit. The following week, it climbed to No 4 in the US, before reaching No 3 on 25 July. The parent album,
Hounds of Love, also reached a new peak in the US, charting at No 12. The song topped the Australian
ARIA Charts to become her second No 1 single in the country. In France, "Running Up That Hill" beat its original chart peak of 24, placing at No 3.
Hounds of Love also rose in popularity on various album charts; it reached No. 1 on
Billboards Top Alternative Albums chart, making it Bush's first US chart-topping album. On 10 June,
The Whole Story rose from No. 76 to No. 19 on the UK Albums Chart, peaking a week later at No 17. A limited edition CD single was released by
Rhino. in September 2022, published in this format for the first time, the 2022 film
A Man Called Otto featured the song "
This Woman's Work" from Bush's album
The Sensual World. In May 2023, that song was also featured in the
Netflix film
The Mother, spiking a sales resurgence for the song. On 1 January 2023, Bush was included at No 60 in the list of
200 Best Singers of All Time by
Rolling Stone. On 22 February 2023, Bush announced that her label, Fish People, had moved to a new distribution partner, The state51 Conspiracy. The new company took over distribution of her post-1980 releases (starting from
The Dreaming) worldwide, and the entire catalogue in the US only. This move has also generated renewed
"indie" reissues of her albums. Bush was nominated for the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, 2021 and 2022, and was inducted in 2023, but did not attend the ceremony. She was inducted by
Big Boi of
OutKast, a long-time fan of her music. In his induction speech, Big Boi said, "What I love about Kate's music is that I never know what sound I'm gonna hear next. She ignores anything that seems like a formula and instead just does whatever she wants to do, like me. She challenges me as a listener and expands my ears and my mind. No matter how many times I look to albums like
The Dreaming or
50 Words for Snow, they sound fresh and surprise me every time. They fill my head with ideas and expand my ambitions for what music can achieve." In a statement, Bush said, On 25 October 2024, Bush released a short animated film, entitled
Little Shrew, in support of
War Child. The film is set to a radio edit of "Snowflake", from
50 Words for Snow. In an interview with the BBC, to promote
Little Shrew, Bush revealed that she was "very keen to start working on a new album when I've got [the film] finished. I've got lots of ideas and I'm really looking forward to getting back into that creative space, it's been a long time." In November 2024, Bush received two nominations at the
67th Grammy Awards for
Best Recording Package and
Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package for the re-editions of
Hounds of Love; her first nominations since 1996. Bush was one of more than 1,000 musicians to back an album of silence released on 25 February 2025,
Is This What We Want?, protesting the use of
unlicensed copyrighted work to train AI. The album debuted at number 38 on the UK Albums Downloads Chart. On 26 June 2025, it was announced that
Little Shrew, would be played throughout the UK before showings of the
Second World War German resistance film
From Hilde, With Love. On 22 September 2025, it was announced that the compilation
Best of the Other Sides, an edited and re-tweaked version of 2018's
The Other Sides would be released digitally on 26 September 2025, and on CD and vinyl on 31 October 2025; the digital release debuted at number 16 on the UK Albums Downloads Chart. ==Personal life==