Legendary singer-songwriter Kate Bush has admitted she’s ‘not ready yet’ when it comes to the prospect of her returning to the stage.
The Wuthering Heights hitmaker, 66, hasn’t performed live since she played more than a dozen consecutive shows at the Eventim Apollo in London 10 years ago.
It’s also been more than a decade since she last released an album of entirely new material, with 50 Words for Snow having been released back in 2011.
While Kate has said she’s eager to work on new material, the chances of her performing that material to a live audience are looking pretty slim.
After saying live audiences ‘keep her going’ on stage, she did confess that she’s ‘not ready yet’ when it comes to performing in front of a crowd again.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, however, Kate did promise fans that she’s keen to get back into the studio and write new music.
She teased: ‘I’m very keen to start working on a new album. I’ve got lots of ideas. I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space. It’s been a long time.’
Kate has also set herself a challenge for any upcoming records, adding that each of her albums have been distinct from one another and that any future album must follow suit.
Continuing, she told Today that she’s only able to now focus on new material because her old material has been properly archived and ‘properly looked after’.
The Running Up That Hill singer said: ‘I managed to find a good home for all my archive material – it was important to make sure that was all sort of properly looked after before I could then move on.’
At the forefront of her creative thinking at present is a short film, titled Little Shrew, which is being made in aid of the independent charity War Child.
Kate started working on the animation film shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine at the start of 2022 – she was inspired by the events she referred to as ‘a shock for all of us’.
While she had originally designed the animation to feature a little girl, wanting to draw attention to how horrific war is, she decided a little shrew would actually work best.
She explained: ‘More people would probably be more empathetic towards a little creature rather than a human. So I came up with the idea of it being a little shrew.’
When Kate is finished with the Little Shrew, her return to music will be a welcome one, with fans eagerly awaiting to see what her next moves will be.
To date, she has two UK number one singles (Wuthering Heights in 1978, and Running Up That Hill in 2022) and three UK number one albums, with her songs having spent the equivalent of four years in the UK top 100.