Running Up That Hill

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.

June 1, 2023
For more than 40 years, Kate Bush has been a singular voice in popular music. In 50 mostly short chapters, music writer Doyle offers a multifaceted portrait of the English singer. Catherine Bush was raised on a farm in what Doyle calls a pastoral oasis outside London, surrounded by music and poetry. Her father played classical compositions on the piano, and she listened to drinking songs and sea shanties as well as King Crimson and Pink Floyd. Using a quirky approach, Doyle weaves in the highlights of the singer's career: her early days in the KT Bush Band, playing London pubs in the late 1970s; releasing her debut album, The Kick Inside, in 1978, which included the ghostly "Wuthering Heights" and "Running up That Hill," her most popular song. Doyle concludes with Bush's surprising pop-culture resurgence when "Running up That Hill" was featured on the sf drama Stranger Things, introducing her to new generations of listeners. Bush has retained a veil of mystery, due mostly to her intense desire for privacy. Doyle does his best to gently lift that veil.

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July 1, 2023

Kate Bush has long combined her unique musicianship, deft wordplay, dancing, directing, and an eclectic flair for innovation with a certain reticence for self-promotion. Perhaps this is unsurprising for someone who was, to her own chagrin, topping the British pop charts as a shy teenager. A lifetime spent following her muse--having fought for and achieved artistic freedom--has meant that many have devotedly watched her career and hoped to achieve similar success following her red-shoed footsteps. Bush deserves a wise and sympathetic biographer, and acclaimed music journalist Doyle (Captain Fantastic: Elton John's Stellar Trip Through the '70s) is both, offering a fascinating and probing work. Bush continues to produce innovative music and is having something of a moment; her 1985 song "Running Up That Hill" was used in the series Stranger Things and became a 2022 hit, her first Top 10 song in the U.S. She was also appointed a Commander of the British Empire for her contributions to music and is a 2023 inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. VERDICT A timely and definitive biography of one of music's most eclectic and influential artists.--Bill Baars

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