Kate Bush
Catherine Bush is an English singer, songwriter, musician, dancer and record producer. She is noted for her eclectic musical style and unconventional lyrics, as well as her innovative dance performances. Her sound and choreography have influenced a range of artists.
Bush began writing songs when she was 11. She was signed to EMI Records after David Gilmour of Pink Floyd helped finance a demo tape. In 1978, at the age of 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights", becoming the first female artist to achieve a UK number one with a fully self-written song. Her debut studio album, The Kick Inside, reached number three on the UK Albums Chart. Bush was the first British solo female artist to top the UK Albums Chart and the first female artist to enter it at number one. All nine of her studio albums have reached the UK top 10, including the number-one albums Never for Ever and Hounds of Love, and the greatest-hits compilation The Whole Story. Since The Dreaming, she has produced all of her studio albums. She took a hiatus between her seventh and eighth albums, The Red Shoes and Aerial. Her latest albums, Director's Cut and 50 Words for Snow, were both released in 2011.
Bush has released 25 UK top 40 singles, including the top-10 hits "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", "Babooshka", "Running Up That Hill", "Don't Give Up" and "King of the Mountain". She experienced renewed attention in 2014 with her concert residency Before the Dawn—her first shows since the Tour of Life in 1979—and in 2022 after "Running Up That Hill" appeared in the Netflix series Stranger Things. That song, when re-released in 2022, became Bush's second UK number one single and her highest entry on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number three, in addition to topping several international charts. Hounds of Love also had a commercial resurgence, topping two Billboard charts and reaching number twelve on the Billboard 200.
Bush has received numerous accolades and honours, including 14 Brit Award nominations and a win for British Female Solo Artist in 1987, as well as seven nominations for Grammy Awards. In 2002, she received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to music. She became a Fellow of the Ivors Academy in the UK in 2020, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.
Life and career
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, and Hannah Patricia , 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 former farmhouse at East Wickham near Welling, which neighbours Bexleyheath. 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 raised as 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.
1973–1977: Career beginnings
Bush attended St Joseph's Convent Grammar School, a Catholic girls' school in nearby Abbey Wood. During this time her family produced a demonstration tape with over 50 of her compositions, which was turned down by record labels. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour received the demo from Ricky Hopper, a mutual friend of Gilmour and the Bush family. 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 tape was sent to the EMI executive Terry Slater, who signed Bush.The British record industry was reaching a point of stagnation. Progressive rock was popular, and visually oriented rock performers were growing in popularity; thus, record labels looking for the next big thing were considering experimental acts. Bush was put on retainer for two years by Bob Mercer, managing director of EMI's group-repertoire division. Mercer believed that Bush's material was good enough to release, but he also believed that should the album fail, it would be demoralising, and that if it were successful, Bush was too young to handle this. In a 1987 interview, Gilmour disputed this version of events, blaming EMI for initially using the "wrong" producers.
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.
Bush wrote and recorded demos of almost 200 songs, some of which circulated as bootlegs. From March to August 1977, she fronted the KT Bush Band at public houses in London. The band included Del Palmer, Brian Bath and Vic King. She began recording her first album in August 1977.
1978–1979: ''The Kick Inside'' and ''Lionheart''
For her debut album, The Kick Inside, Bush was persuaded to use established session musicians instead of the KT Bush Band. She retained some of these even after she had brought her bandmates back on board. 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". Two music videos with similar choreography were created by Bush to accompany the song. The studio version sees her perform in a dark room with mist whilst wearing a white dress, suggesting her character is a ghost. The outside version sees Bush dancing in a grassy area on Salisbury Plain whilst wearing a red dress.In the United Kingdom alone, The Kick Inside sold over a million copies. "Wuthering Heights" topped the UK and Australian charts and became an international hit. Bush became the first British woman to reach number one on the UK charts with a self-written song. "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.
Bob Mercer blamed Bush's lesser success in the United States on American radio formats, saying there were no outlets for Bush's visual presentation. EMI capitalised on Bush's appearance by promoting the album with a poster of her in a tight pink top which emphasised her breasts. In an interview with NME in 1982, Bush criticised the choice: "People weren't even generally aware that I wrote my own songs or played the piano. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist in a female body." In late 1978, EMI persuaded Bush to quickly record a follow-up album, Lionheart, to take advantage of the success of The Kick Inside. The album was produced by Andrew Powell, assisted by Bush. Although it gained a high number of sales and spawned the hit single "Wow", it did not achieve the success of The Kick Inside, reaching number six in the UK album charts. She went on to express dissatisfaction with Lionheart, feeling that it had needed more time.
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. Following the release of Lionheart, she was required by EMI to undertake heavy promotional work and an exhausting tour. 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". The show was co-devised and performed on stage with magician Simon Drake. Bush was involved in every aspect of the production, choreography, set design, costume design and hiring. The shows were noted for her dancing, complex lighting and her 17 costume changes per show. Because of her need to dance as she sang, sound engineers used a wire coat hanger and a radio microphone to fashion a headset microphone; it was the first use by a rock performer since the Spotnicks used a rudimentary version in the early 1960s. 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. It was her first record to reach the top position in the UK album charts, also making her the first female British artist to achieve that status, and the first female artist ever to enter the album chart at No. 1. The top-selling single from the album was "Babooshka", which reached No. 5 in the UK singles chart. 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." The album entered the UK album chart at No. 3, 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. The title track, featuring Rolf Harris and Percy Edwards, stalled at No. 48, 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.