Kate Bush has shied away from the spotlight in recent years, and last released a studio album in 2011. But the singer has told the BBC she is “very keen” to start working on new music.
Bush said there are “lots of ideas” she wants to pursue, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space, it’s been a long time.”
The singer’s last new record, the melancholic 50 Words for Snow, was released in 2011. Since then, her only releases have been live or compilation albums.
Bush gave a rare interview to presenter Emma Barnett as she launched a new short film she has written and directed to raise money for children affected by war.
The black-and-white, four-minute animation, called Little Shrew, is set to her 2011 track Snowflake and aims to raise money and awareness for the charity War Child.
Bush shot to fame in 1978 and is best known for hits such as Wuthering Heights, Hounds of Love, Babooshka and King of the Mountain.
But she attracted a new generation of fans in 2022 when one of her biggest songs, Running Up That Hill, was used in the Netflix series Stranger Things.
Asked whether she was currently working on new material, Bush said: “Not at the moment, but I’ve 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.”
When asked if it was something she had been hoping to do for a while, Bush replied: “Yes it is, really. Particularly [in] the last year, I’ve felt really ready to start doing something new.”
But when Barnett drew attention to a recent interview with David Gilmour, in which the Pink Floyd star said he’d tried to persuade Bush to perform live again, the singer joked: “I’m not there yet.”
Little Shrew is released on Bush’s official website on Friday. It is free to watch, but encourages viewers to support organisations helping children in conflict.
The short film, which Bush worked with an illustrator to create, was partly inspired by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“I started working on it a couple of years ago, it was not long after the Ukrainian war broke out, and I think it was such a shock for all of us,” Bush explained.
“It’s been such a long period of peace we’d all been living through. And I just felt 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.
“And so I came up with this idea for a storyboard and 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.”
Reflecting on the impact of conflict on children, Bush said: “I think war is horrific for everyone, particularly civilians, because they’re so vulnerable in these situations. But for a child, it’s unimaginable how frightening it must be for them.”
The 66-year-old added: “I think we’ve all been through very difficult times. These are dark times that we’re living in and I think, 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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