Kate Bush, born in Bexleyheath, Kent in 1958, signed to EMI at 16 and made Wuthering Heights the first UK number-one single written and performed by a woman. Hounds of Love (1985), home to Running Up That Hill, is the masterpiece; The Kick Inside (1978) is where it all starts. Shop Kate Bush vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Catherine Bush was born in Bexleyheath, Kent, England on July 30, 1958. She was signed to EMI Records at age 16 in 1974 after David Gilmour of Pink Floyd heard her demos and arranged her recording contract. Her 1978 debut single Wuthering Heights (a setting of Emily Brontë's novel) became the first UK number-one single written and performed by a woman. Her 1985 landmark album Hounds of Love - particularly the conceptual second side, The Ninth Wave - is widely considered one of the most important art pop albums of all time. She pioneered women's self-production in popular music. Her 1985 song Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) experienced a commercial resurgence in 2022 after its prominent placement in Stranger Things season 4, reaching number one in multiple international markets nearly 37 years after its original release. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023 and made a CBE in 2013.
Kate Bush's sound combines art pop, pop rock, progressive rock, baroque pop, theatrical pop, and electronic with her distinctive multi-octave vocal range, extensive use of literary and theatrical narrative content, the Fairlight CMI synthesizer (which she helped popularize in the early 1980s), and consistently distinctive production approaches drawing on her self-production work from the early 1980s onward.
Original EMI pressings of the Kate Bush catalog are widely collected. Multiple anniversary editions, audiophile reissues (Mobile Fidelity, the 2018 Fish People remasters), and the comprehensive Remastered in Vinyl box sets have been released.
Listeners new to Kate Bush typically start with Hounds of Love (1985) or The Kick Inside (1978).
