At nineteen she topped the UK charts with a song she wrote herself

Kate Bush grew up in an old farmhouse in East Wickham, near Welling in Kent, in a family where art was part of daily life. Her mother was an amateur Irish dancer, her father an amateur pianist, one brother made musical instruments and the other was a poet and photographer. At eleven, she taught herself the piano and began writing songs.

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd helped finance a demo tape, which led to a deal with EMI. Then, in 1978, at nineteen, she topped the UK singles chart for four weeks with her debut single “Wuthering Heights”, becoming the first female artist to take a fully self-written song to number one in Britain. Her debut album, The Kick Inside, reached number three. She was the first British solo woman to top the UK Albums Chart and the first woman to enter it at number one.

What distinguished her was a refusal to blend in. She is noted for her eclectic style, unconventional lyrics and innovative dance performances, and since The Dreaming in 1982 she has produced all her own studio albums. Never for Ever and Hounds of Love both reached number one, as did the compilation The Whole Story. Her singles include “Babooshka”, “Running Up That Hill” and “Don't Give Up”, a duet with Peter Gabriel. “An Architect's Dream” comes from the later period, after a hiatus between The Red Shoes in 1993 and Aerial in 2005.

Time has been kind to her. When “Running Up That Hill” appeared in the Netflix series Stranger Things in 2022, it became her second UK number one and reached number three on the US Billboard Hot 100. Her 2014 concert residency, Before the Dawn, her first shows since 1979, was acclaimed. She is a CBE, received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music in 2002, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. Few artists have been so determinedly themselves, and so widely followed.