Kate Bush‘s last release of original material was 2011’s 50 Words for Snow – but she says she’s finally working her way back to new music.
A long-awaited return to the stage followed with the Before the Dawn show in 2014, which led to her second live record two years later. Bush revealed her plans while announcing the launch of a new anti-war video based on the 2011 track “Snowflake,” seen below.
“I started working on it a couple of years ago … not long after the Ukrainian war broke out,” Bush told the BBC in a rare interview. “I think it was such a shock. … It’s been such a long period of peace we’d all been living through.”
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The four-minute clip supports the War Child charity. “I wanted to make a little animation that would feature, originally, a little girl. It was really the idea of children caught up in war – I wanted to draw attention to how horrific it is for children,” Bush added. She “felt that, actually, people would be more empathetic towards a creature rather than a human. So I came up with the idea of it being a little shrew.”
In a larger sense, “I think we’ve all been through very difficult times,” she said. “To a certain extent, everyone is just worn out. We went through the pandemic – that was a huge shock – and I think we felt that, once that was over, that we would be able to get on with some kind of normal life. But in fact it just seems to be going from one situation to another, and more wars seem to be breaking out all the time.”
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Asked about her musical endeavors, Bush says she has “been caught up doing a lot of archive work over the last few years – redesigning our website, putting a lyric book together. And I’m very keen to start working on a new album when I’ve got this finished. I’ve got lots of ideas and I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space. It’s been a long time. … Particularly the last year, I’ve felt really ready to start doing something new.”
Old friend and collaborator David Gilmour is on board. Asked recently if he could get Bush “back on stage soon,” he said: “Kate Bush is the only person who can get Kate Bush back on stage. … I’ve tried persuading her recently, actually. Gently.”
His comment was mentioned to Bush, who light-heartedly replied: “I’m not there yet!”
Watch Kate Bush’s ‘Snowflake’ Charity Video
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso and Michael Gallucci