Kate Bush says she’s “very keen” to record a new album: “It’s been a long time”
The singer delivered the update as she spoke about releasing a new short film inspired by Russia's war on Ukraine.
By Nick Reilly
Kate Bush has said she’s “very keen” to make a new album, confirming “I’ve got lots of ideas … it’s been a long time.”
The 66-year-old music legend made the exciting admission in a rare interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning and said: “I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space”.
Bush was speaking to Emma Barnett to announce the release of Little Shrew (Snowflake), a new short film written and directed by the star inspired by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The four minute animated clip depicts a shrew searching for hope as she travels across a bombed-out city. The clip is soundtracked by Snowflake, a song from Bush’s 2011 album, 50 Words for Snow.
The singer has not released any music since that 2011 work, but told Barnett that the film had given her inspiration to “[get] back into that creative space”.
“I’ve been caught up doing a lot of archive work over the last few years on all kinds of different levels: redesigning our website, putting a lyric book together,” the singer said.
“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.”
She added: ” “This animation has taken up a lot of time this year, so really once this is finished I’ll be ready to start anew.”
As for the new film, Bush explained she began working on the project a short time after the Russia-Ukraine war broke out.
“I think it was such a shock for all of us, it’s been such a long period of peace that we’ve all been living through,” she said. “And I just thought that I really wanted to make a little animation that would feature… originally a little girl, it was really the idea of a child and children who are caught up in war, I wanted to draw attention to how horrific it is for children. So I came up with this idea for a little storyboard.”
Explaining the decision to use a shrew to depict the plight of Ukrainians, she added: ““I think to a certain extent we’ve all become really desensitised by the violence that we see in films all the time, where people are just being slaughtered.
“But if a dog were to be killed in a film, everyone would be up in arms. It’s a terrible thing to say but I think there is an element of truth in that.”
Bush added to Barnett that she was not quite ready to return to the stage, with her last performances coming in a 2014 residency at London’s Hammersmith Apollo.
She also garnered a new legion of fans in 2021 when her 1985 hit ‘Running Up That Hill’ featured in a pivotal scene in the fourth season of Stranger Things. It eventually topped a billion streams on Spotify.