Long-term Kate Bush devotees and new teenage fans won over by Stranger Things will both find enlightenment in Tom Doyle’s prismastic portrait of the elusive artist.

The Times (UK)

Praiseworthy.

The Guardian

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.

Publishers Weekly

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 her surprising pop-culture resurgence when “Running up That Hill” was featured on the sci-fi 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.

Booklist

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 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. A timely and definitive biography of one of music’s most eclectic and influential artists.

Library Journal

Approaching its subject from inspired angles...probably the best [Kate] Bush book to date.

Record Collector