Trivia / Kate Bush

• Bad Export for You: The British versions of her early albums are considered to have better sound than the American ones, likely due to the American releases being mastered from safety tapes.
• Breakthrough Hit: Popular from the get-go in her native Britain since "Wuthering Heights", "Running up that Hill (A Deal with God)" and its parent album Hounds of Love was her American breakthrough.
• Career Resurrection: Her experience recording The Red Shoes became so exhausting, further amplified by her indifference for the finished outcome, that she took a hiatus intended to be for a year, but instead lengthened to twelve after she became a mother. Aerial was her first album following that break, with its immense success and acclaim affirming her comeback in 2005.
• Channel Hop:
  • Bush was originally signed onto Harvest Records as her label in the US and Canada, only to shift over to EMI America Records for Lionheart, with The Kick Inside being reissued through them as well. One pressing of the latter was even issued on EMI America's sister label Liberty Records.
  • Between the release of the Greatest Hits Album The Whole Story in 1986 and the release of her studio album The Sensual World in 1989, Bush hopped over from EMI America to Columbia Records for unknown reasons. Notably, this had the knock-on effect of keeping the 1990 retrospective Boxed Set This Woman's Work: Anthology 1978-1990 from being released in those territories, as it included not only The Sensual World, but also its associated B-sides on the two CDs devoted to non-album material.
  • In 2011, she'd shift over to her newly-created vanity label Fish People Records (distributed by EMI) in all territories for the release of Director's Cut, with the label switching distributors to Concord Records after the dissolution of EMI in 2012.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In this interview, she reveals that she hates a lot of her older songs:
    Interviewer: Which of your old songs make you wince?
    Kate Bush: My God, loads. Absolutely loads. Either the lyric's not thought out properly or it's just crap or the performances weren't well executed. But you have to get it in context. You were doing it at the time and it was the best you could do then. You've got to live with it. Some of those early songs, though, you think, 'What was I thinking about? Did I write that?'
  • In the years since The Red Shoes released, Bush expressed dissatisfaction with the album, singling out the use of digital recording equipment for making it sound too "edgy." Because of this, Bush re-recorded seven of its twelve songs^note "Song of Solomon", "Lily", the Title Track, "Moments of Pleasure", "Top of the City", "And So Is Love", and "Rubberband Girl" on analog tape for Director's Cut; the collector's edition of that album additionally included a remastered version of The Red Shoes sourced from an analog backup tape.
  • Kate singled out Lionheart due to record company pressure to quickly record a follow-up to her debut album.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • She's called The Dreaming her "angry that people are more fixated on my looks and not my artistry" album.
  • During the making of The Red Shoes, Bush dealt with the death of her mother and a breakup with Del Palmer.
• Creator Couple: Her long-term boyfriend and bassist Del Palmer has played on her albums even after they broke up.
• Late Export for You: EMI America Records declined to issue her Never For Ever in the U.S. following the failure of The Kick Inside and Lionheart there. The Billboard chart entry and favorable reviews for The Dreaming there prompted them to finally issue that album and reissue her earlier work stateside.
• Newbie Boom: "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)"'s appearance in Stranger Things exposed her work to a new generation of fans thirty-seven years after its initial release. The song hit the top of the charts in 11 countries.
• No Export for You:
  • The 1990 CD Boxed Set This Woman's Work: Anthology 1978-1990, containing all of Bush's studio albums at that point plus two discs of non-album material, was never released in the US or Canada on account of Bush's Channel Hop to Columbia Records in those territories the previous year, consequently cutting EMI America Records off from The Sensual World and its associated B-sides, the latter of which are intertwined throughout the non-album discs.
  • The organizers of the 2017 Coachella festival had the chance to book Bush's first ever U.S. performance, but decided that American audiences wouldn't understand her.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Rolf Harris' vocals were deleted from two songs on the 2018 remaster of Aerial and replaced by Bush's son Bertie. The deletion follows Harris' conviction and imprisonment for sex crimes against minors. However, Harris' didgeridoo parts on Aerial and The Dreaming remained on the remastered albums.
  • The Director's Cut version of "Deeper Understanding" sees Bertie playing into this trope once again by portraying the sentient computer, which on The Sensual World was originally represented by Bush singing through a Vocoder. Additionally, while Bush needed backing vocalists accompanying her to make her lines discernible in 1989, the 2011 version features Albert singing alone.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Throughout the '80s and '90s, a large amount of Whovians believed that Bush wrote the Doctor Who serials "Kinda" and "Snakedance", owed to their unusually cerebral nature and the fact that the name attached to them, "Christopher Bailey," wasn't credited with much else in the way of TV work, leading people to believe it was a pseudonym. This was eventually debunked when Bailey turned out to be an actual person, granting interviews in 2002 and 2011.
• Reality Subtext: Contrary to popular belief, averted. She said a few times that her weird reputation probably comes from people assuming her songs are autobiographical, but really most of them are singing from a character's perspective. Even The Sensual World, confirmed to be more personally-driven than her other albums, focuses more on character stories than on overtly autobiographical lyricism.
• Real-Life Relative: Her brother Patrick (Paddy) is a multi-instrumentalist who has played on most of her albums, their other brother John Carder Bush has provided vocals, the occasional lyric and a great many iconic photographs, and both of their parents contributed vocals to Hounds of Love. In addition, Kate's husband Danny McIntosh is also her regular guitarist, and their son Albert (Bertie) sings on 50 Words for Snow and Before the Dawn (as well as on Director's Cut and the 2018 remaster for Aerial, replacing the disgraced Rolf Harris in the latter case).
• Reclusive Artist: She gained this reputation due to her reluctance to play live shows after her first tour (except for special occasions, like doing Live Aid with David Gilmour), her dislike of interviews, and the long hiatus between The Red Shoes and Aerial (over a decade). During this time, she was simply spending time with her family and taking a break to raise her son, but this didn't stop the rumour mill from claiming she was seriously mentally ill (perhaps stemming from her Cloud Cuckoolander reputation) or morbidly obese from being depressed and eating chocolate. In one interview, she wryly noted how this massive weight gain always seems to disappear right before she makes one of her rare public appearances. In 2016 she opened up about being labeled as such:
  Kate Bush: I suppose people really like to put things into boxes or pigeonhole people. That tag kind of hung around for a long time when I wasn't making albums or between albums. I can think of a lot of worse things to be called and how can someone who's a recluse get up in front of 3 or 4,000 people and do all those shows? I'm not a recluse but it makes people feel comfortable to call me that I suppose.
• Referenced by...: Marsupilami: Hoobadventure contains a level titled Running Down That Hill, an obvious reference to Running Up That Hill.
• Revival by Commercialization: After being featured in two pivotal scenes in the fourth season of Stranger Things in 2022, "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" hit No. 1 on the iTunes charts within just two days. Subsequently, the song topped the charts in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK and entered the top 10 for the first time in Canada and the US, even far toppling its original release in terms of statistics. It strongly helped that Bush herself was a massive fan of the series.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: "The Sensual World" was originally based on Molly Bloom's monologue in Ulysses, but James Joyce's heirs wouldn't let her use the text and she had to rewrite it. After the copyright on Ulysses expired, it was released with the original lyrics as "Flower Of The Mountain" on Director's Cut.
• Sequel Gap: Aerial released a whopping twelve years after The Red Shoes, which was so long of a wait that it led many to surmise that she'd quit music altogether before Aerial actually dropped. Director's Cut in turn released six years after Aerial, and while 50 Words for Snow came out just six months later, it has yet to see a follow-up after over a decade. These gaps have added onto Bush's already-existing reputation as a Reclusive Artist.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original draft of the song "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was written from Maid Marian's point of view rather than Robin Hood's, and the song was offered to Kate Bush to record, but Kate disliked the song and turned it down. After the song was rejected by not only Kate but Annie Lennox and Lisa Stansfield, it was reworked and given to Bryan Adams and became a massive worldwide hit.
  • She was asked to sing Moonraker's theme song, but declined.
  • She made a song for Dinosaur that ultimately got cut because of test audiences reacting poorly to it. Supposedly it got reworked as "Lyra", the ending credits song for The Golden Compass.
  • According to John Lydon, he wrote a song called "Bird in Hand", about the exploitation of parrots, with the intention of giving it to Bush. However, she turned the offer down; it remains unrecorded to this day.
• Working Title: The Title Track of The Dreaming was originally recorded and given out as a promotional single under the title "The Abo Song", in reference to its lyrics about the plight of Aboriginal Australians. Thanks to a rather unfortunate case of being Separated by a Common Language though, both Bush and EMI were unaware that "Abo" is actually a highly offensive racial slur in Australia, and had to recall the promotional single as quickly as possible upon finding out; the song was renamed "The Dreaming", after the concept in Aboriginal Australian Myths, in time for its commercial release as the album's second lead single.

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