* BadExportForYou: The British versions of her early albums are considered to have better sound than the American ones, likely due to the American releases being mastered from safety tapes.
* BreakthroughHit: Popular from the get-go in her native Britain since "Wuthering Heights", "Running up that Hill (A Deal with God)" and its parent album ''Music/HoundsOfLove'' was her American breakthrough.
* CareerResurrection: Her experience recording ''The Red Shoes'' became so exhausting, further amplified by her indifference for the finished outcome, that she took a hiatus intended to be for a year, but instead lengthened to twelve after she became a mother. ''Aerial'' was her first album following that break, with its immense success and acclaim affirming her comeback in 2005.
* ChannelHop:
** Bush was originally signed onto Creator/HarvestRecords as her label in the US and Canada, only to shift over to Creator/EMIAmericaRecords for ''Lionheart'', with ''Music/TheKickInside'' being reissued through them as well. One pressing of the latter was even issued on EMI America's sister label Creator/LibertyRecords.
** Between the release of the GreatestHitsAlbum ''The Whole Story'' in 1986 and the release of her studio album ''The Sensual World'' in 1989, Bush hopped over from EMI America to Creator/ColumbiaRecords for unknown reasons. Notably, this had the knock-on effect of keeping the 1990 retrospective BoxedSet ''This Woman's Work: Anthology 1978-1990'' from being released in those territories, as it included not only ''The Sensual World'', but also its associated B-sides on the two [=CDs=] devoted to non-album material.
** In 2011, she'd shift over to her newly-created vanity label Fish People Records (distributed by EMI) in all territories for the release of ''Director's Cut'', with the label switching distributors to Concord Records after the dissolution of EMI in 2012.
* CreatorBacklash:
** In [[http://www.gaffa.org/reaching/i93_q.html this]] interview, she reveals that she hates a lot of her older songs:
--->'''Interviewer:''' Which of your old songs make you wince?\\
'''Kate Bush:''' My God, loads. Absolutely loads. Either the lyric's not thought out properly or it's just crap or the performances weren't well executed. But you have to get it in context. You were doing it at the time and it was the best you could do then. You've got to live with it. Some of those early songs, though, you think, 'What was I ''thinking'' about? Did ''I'' write that?'
** In the years since ''The Red Shoes'' released, Bush expressed dissatisfaction with the album, singling out the use of digital recording equipment for making it sound too "edgy." Because of this, Bush re-recorded seven of its twelve songs[[note]]"Song of Solomon", "Lily", the TitleTrack, "Moments of Pleasure", "Top of the City", "And So Is Love", and "Rubberband Girl"[[/note]] on analog tape for ''Director's Cut''; the collector's edition of that album additionally included a remastered version of ''The Red Shoes'' sourced from an analog backup tape.
** Kate singled out ''Lionheart'' due to record company pressure to quickly record a follow-up to her debut album.
* CreatorBreakdown:
** She's called ''The Dreaming'' her "angry that people are more fixated on my looks and not my artistry" album.
** During the making of ''The Red Shoes'', Bush dealt with the death of her mother and a breakup with Del Palmer.
* CreatorCouple: Her long-term boyfriend and bassist Del Palmer has played on her albums [[WorkingWithTheEx even after they broke up]].
* LateExportForYou: Creator/EMIAmericaRecords declined to issue her ''Never For Ever'' in the U.S. following the failure of ''Music/TheKickInside'' and ''Lionheart'' there. The Billboard chart entry and favorable reviews for ''Music/TheDreaming'' there prompted them to finally issue that album and reissue her earlier work stateside.
* NewbieBoom: "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)"'s appearance in ''Series/StrangerThings'' exposed her work to a new generation of fans ''thirty-seven'' years after its initial release. The song hit the top of the charts in 11 countries.
* NoExportForYou:
** The 1990 CD BoxedSet ''This Woman's Work: Anthology 1978-1990'', containing all of Bush's studio albums at that point plus two discs of non-album material, was never released in the US or Canada on account of Bush's ChannelHop to Creator/ColumbiaRecords in those territories the previous year, consequently cutting Creator/EMIAmericaRecords off from ''The Sensual World'' and its associated B-sides, the latter of which are intertwined throughout the non-album discs.
** The organizers of the 2017 Coachella festival had the chance to book Bush's first ever U.S. performance, but decided that American audiences wouldn't understand her.
* TheOtherDarrin:
** Rolf Harris' vocals were deleted from two songs on the 2018 remaster of ''Aerial'' and replaced by Bush's son Bertie. The deletion follows Harris' [[RoleEndingMisdemeanor conviction and imprisonment]] for sex crimes against minors. However, Harris' didgeridoo parts on ''Aerial'' and ''The Dreaming'' remained on the remastered albums.
** The ''Director's Cut'' version of "Deeper Understanding" sees Bertie playing into this trope once again by portraying the sentient computer, which on ''The Sensual World'' was originally represented by Bush singing through a Vocoder. Additionally, while Bush needed backing vocalists accompanying her to make her lines discernible in 1989, the 2011 version features Albert singing alone.
* PopCultureUrbanLegends: Throughout the '80s and '90s, a large amount of UsefulNotes/{{Whovians}} believed that Bush wrote the ''Series/DoctorWho'' serials [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E3Kinda "Kinda"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E2Snakedance "Snakedance"]], owed to their unusually cerebral nature and the fact that the name attached to them, "Christopher Bailey," wasn't credited with much else in the way of TV work, leading people to believe it was a pseudonym. This was eventually debunked when Bailey turned out to be an actual person, granting interviews in 2002 and 2011.
* RealitySubtext: Contrary to popular belief, averted. She said a few times that her weird reputation probably comes from people assuming her songs are autobiographical, but really most of them are singing from a character's perspective. Even ''Music/TheSensualWorld'', confirmed to be more personally-driven than her other albums, focuses more on character stories than on overtly autobiographical lyricism.
* RealLifeRelative: Her brother Patrick (Paddy) is a multi-instrumentalist who has played on most of her albums, their other brother John Carder Bush has provided vocals, the occasional lyric and a great many iconic photographs, and both of their parents contributed vocals to ''Hounds of Love''. In addition, Kate's husband Danny [=McIntosh=] is also her regular guitarist, and their son Albert (Bertie) sings on ''50 Words for Snow'' and ''Before the Dawn'' (as well as on ''Director's Cut'' and the 2018 remaster for ''Aerial'', replacing the disgraced Rolf Harris in the latter case).
* ReclusiveArtist: She gained this reputation due to her reluctance to play live shows after her first tour (except for special occasions, like doing Live Aid with David Gilmour), her dislike of interviews, and the long hiatus between ''The Red Shoes'' and ''Aerial'' (over a decade). During this time, she was simply spending time with her family and taking a break to raise her son, but this didn't stop the rumour mill from claiming she was [[MadArtist seriously mentally ill]] (perhaps stemming from her CloudCuckoolander reputation) or morbidly obese from [[HeartbreakAndIceCream being depressed and eating chocolate.]] In one interview, she wryly noted how this massive weight gain always seems to disappear right before she makes one of her rare public appearances. In 2016 she opened up about being labeled as such:
-->'''Kate Bush:''' I suppose people really like to put things into boxes or pigeonhole people. That tag kind of hung around for a long time when I wasn't making albums or between albums. I can think of a lot of worse things to be called and how can someone who's a recluse get up in front of 3 or 4,000 people and do all those shows? I'm not a recluse but it makes people feel comfortable to call me that I suppose.
* ReferencedBy: ''VideoGame/MarsupilamiHoobadventure'' contains a level titled ''Running Down That Hill'', an obvious reference to ''Running Up That Hill''.
* RevivalByCommercialization: After being featured in two pivotal scenes in the fourth season of ''Series/StrangerThings'' in 2022, "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" hit No. 1 on the [=iTunes=] charts within just two days. Subsequently, the song topped the charts in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK and entered the top 10 for the first time in Canada and the US, [[ColbertBump even far toppling its original release in terms of statistics]]. It strongly helped that Bush herself was a massive fan of the series.
* ScrewedByTheLawyers: "The Sensual World" was originally based on Molly Bloom's monologue in ''{{Literature/Ulysses}}'', but Creator/JamesJoyce's heirs wouldn't let her use the text and she had to rewrite it. After the copyright on ''Ulysses'' expired, it was released with the original lyrics as "Flower Of The Mountain" on ''Director's Cut''.
* SequelGap: ''Aerial'' released a whopping ''twelve'' years after ''The Red Shoes'', which was so long of a wait that it led many to surmise that she'd quit music altogether before ''Aerial'' actually dropped. ''Director's Cut'' in turn released six years after ''Aerial'', and while ''50 Words for Snow'' came out just six months later, it has yet to see a follow-up after over a decade. These gaps have added onto Bush's already-existing reputation as a ReclusiveArtist.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** The original draft of the song "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" from ''Film/RobinHoodPrinceOfThieves'' was written from Maid Marian's point of view rather than Robin Hood's, and the song was offered to Kate Bush to record, but Kate disliked the song and turned it down. After the song was rejected by not only Kate but Music/AnnieLennox and Lisa Stansfield, it was reworked and given to Music/BryanAdams and became a massive worldwide hit.
** She was asked to sing ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'''s theme song, but declined.
** She made a song for ''WesternAnimation/{{Dinosaur}}'' that ultimately got cut because of test audiences reacting poorly to it. Supposedly it got reworked as "Lyra", the ending credits song for ''Film/TheGoldenCompass''.
** According to Music/JohnLydon, he wrote a song called "Bird in Hand", about the exploitation of parrots, with the intention of giving it to Bush. However, she turned the offer down; it remains unrecorded to this day.
* WorkingTitle: The TitleTrack of ''The Dreaming'' was originally recorded and given out as a promotional single under the title "The Abo Song", in reference to its lyrics about the plight of Aboriginal Australians. Thanks to a rather unfortunate case of being SeparatedByACommonLanguage though, both Bush and EMI were unaware that "Abo" is actually a highly offensive racial slur in Australia, and had to recall the promotional single as quickly as possible upon finding out; the song was renamed "The Dreaming", after the concept in Myth/AboriginalAustralianMyths, in time for its commercial release as the album's second lead single.
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