Kate Bush

The music industry has entertained its fair share of mavericks, but spine-chillingly original performers of the calibre of Kate Bush only come along (at most) once in every generation.

A truly precocious talent, Bush taught herself the piano aged 11 and began writing original songs shortly after. She received an early break after her first demo attracted the attention of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, who produced a second Bush demo, which secured the budding singer-songwriter a deal with EMI. Her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside, was released when she was just 19, and she attained instant stardom when her haunting, Emily Brontë-inspired debut single, Wuthering Heights, made her the first British woman to reach No.1 in the UK with a self-written song.

Consistently thrilling fans and wowing critics, Bush has since assembled a truly singular body of work. Her early 80s releases, such as Never For Ever and 1982’s self-produced The Dreaming, were breathtakingly diverse, while 1985’s landmark Hounds Of Love and its intensely personal follow-up, The Sensual World, attracted mainstream success in the US.

Following 1993’s The Red Shoes, Bush relinquished the spotlight to raise her son, Bertie, but 2005’s Aerial reintroduced her to the charts, while the Director’s Cut and 50 Words For Snow albums offered continued affirmation of her unique musical vision. In 2014, tickets for Bush’s long-awaited live comeback, the Before The Dawn residency, staged at London’s Hammersmith Apollo, sold out in barely 15 minutes. More recently, the Stranger Things-assisted success of Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) showed that, when it comes to captivating whole new generations of fans, Kate Bush’s elusive, genre-defying music is still very much in a league of its own.