Kate Bush ‘very keen’ to work on new album

Anyone who has a favourite record store may have noticed that the Kate Bush section has been rather stocked of late.

The elusive artist’s last release was in 2011 for her tenth record, ‘50 Words for Snow’ – the same year that equally evasive and much-missed-in-the-recording-studio Tom Waits dropped his last album to date, ‘Bad As Me’. However, the British singer-songwriter has gained a whole new generation of followers thanks to a scene in Stranger Things.

The 66-year-old’s 1985 single ‘Running Up That Hill’ was used in Netflix’s hit show in 2022, leading to a huge surge is listens. The song even hit No. 1 on the UK charts.

Still, she’s kept a low profile and didn’t even attend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony when she was inducted last year.

However, the interminable-seeming wait for new music may be coming to an end.

In a rare interview with BBC Radio 4’s “Today”, Bush said she is “very keen to start working on a new album.”

Bush was on the show to speak about a new black-and-white animation short film, Little Shrew – set to her song ‘Snowflake’, taken from ‘50 Words for Snow’ – that she wrote and directed to raise funds for the charity War Child.

The short film is out now on Bush’s website. It is free to watch, but encourages viewers to support organisations helping children affected by conflict.

“I started working on it (with illustrator Jim Kay) a couple of years ago, it was not long after the Ukrainian war broke out, and I think it was such a shock for all of us,” Bush said. 

“I came up with this idea for a storyboard and felt that, actually, people would be more empathetic towards a creature rather than a human. So I came up with the idea of it being a little shrew,” said Bush.

“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.”

When asked if she was working on new material, Bush said: “Not at the moment, but I’ve been caught up doing a lot of archive work over the last few years, redesigning our website, putting a lyric book together.”

That said, she continued: “I’m very keen to start working on a new album when I’ve got this 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.”

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”.

Bush’s last concerts were the 22-show Before the Dawn residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in London in 2014. Before that live comeback, she hadn’t played a full-length show since her Tour of Life in 1979.

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Let’s hope that new material is coming soon, and that a lucky few will get to see her perform on stage in the coming years.

Additional sources • BBC Radio 4