Entertainment
Kate Bush ‘very keen’ to do new album – but she won’t be back on stage anytime soon
Kate Bush says she’s “very keen to start working on a new album”.
It’s been 13 years since the 66-year-old star last shared new music, with the studio album 50 Words For Snow.
Despite the gap between releases and a closely guarded private life, Bush gained a legion of new fans in 2022 after the fourth series of Netflix’s Stranger Things featured her 1985 song Running Up That Hill.
“I’m very keen to start working on a new album,” The Hounds Of Love singer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
She added: “I’ve got lots of ideas. I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space. It’s been a long time.”
Bush also said that any new music she puts out has “got to be different”, as all of her previous albums are different from each other.
Despite being eager to work on new music, she said she was not yet ready to return to the stage, saying “I’m not there yet”.
The English singer-songwriter’s last full live concert was back in May 1979, with a concert residency of 22 dates in 2014.
Bush also spoke to the Today programme about her new short animation, titled Little Shrew, for the charity War Child, which she said “has taken up a lot of time this year” and added that once it is finished “I’ll be ready to start anew”.
The music for the short film is a new 2024 radio edit of the track Snowflake, which originally appeared on her 2011 album.
‘Dark times we’re living in’
Bush started working on the animation not long after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, which she describes as a “shock for all of us”.
“I came up with this idea for a little storyboard, and thought that actually, more people would probably be more empathetic towards a little creature rather than a human,” she said.
“So I came up with the idea of it being a little shrew.”
Bush added that “we’ve all become really desensitised by the violence that we see in the films all the time”.
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She said: “You know, where people are just being slaughtered, really. But if a dog were to be killed in a film, everyone would be up in arms. I mean it’s a terrible thing to say, but I think there is an element of truth in that.
“I think we’ve all been through very difficult times. These are dark times that we’re living in. And I think to a certain extent, everyone is just worn out.
“I mean, we went through the pandemic, and that was a huge shock.
“And I think really we felt that once that was over, if you could ever say it was over, that we would all be able to sort of get on with some kind of normal life.
“But in fact, it just seems to be, you know, going from one situation to another and more wars seem to be breaking out all the time.”
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Pic: PA
In 1978, Bush became the first woman to get to number one in the UK chart with a fully self-written song with her debut single, Wuthering Heights, inspired by Emily Bronte’s gothic novel.
Other hits include Babooshka, Cloudbusting and The Man With The Child In His Eyes, and she’s had three number one UK albums with Never For Ever, Hounds Of Love and The Whole Story.