May 1, 2023
Journalist Doyle (Captain Fantastic) delves beyond Kate Bush’s recently revived 1985 hit “Running up That Hill” in this colorful career retrospective. Drawing on his 2005 interview with Bush for Mojo magazine and conversations with her friends and family, Doyle contends that her exacting creative vision—“She can see and hear exactly what she wants to get,” according to Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour—classes Bush as more “visual auteur” than celebrity musician. Doyle tracks Bush’s creative impulse from writing poems as a child to spending hours creating music in her barn turned recording studio at East Wickham Farm and producing her own albums. Comprehensively charting her career, from The Kick Inside (1978) to Director’s Cut (2011), Doyle captures a more multidimensional view of the artist, allowing glimpses into her personal life, including the earth-shattering loss of her mother in 1992 and her friendship with David Bowie. Split into 50 brief chapters, Doyle’s portrait stitches together a comprehensive, revealing commentary on the notoriously media-shy artist and her complicated relationship to her craft, public persona, and audience (“If you make music and you don’t let people hear it, you could almost say it doesn’t exist,” she once said). Bush’s new-generation fans and original devotees will devour this.