How Kate Bush Shaped These 4 Iconic Singers

In 2022, when “Running Up That Hill” appeared in an episode of Stranger Things, many younger viewers were hearing the incomparable Kate Bush for the very first time. However, they likely had already heard Bush’s influence without realizing it in the music of artists shaped by her baroque and art pop.

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“Running Up That Hill” remains Bush’s defining track, but since 1978, she’s released groundbreaking albums including Hounds Of Love, Never For Ever, and The Kick Inside. She’s also recorded powerful duets with Peter Gabriel (“Don’t Give Up”) and Elton John (“Snowed In At Wheeler Street”), and her legacy endures in the work of her fellow icons listed here.

Adele

Adele said Kate Bush inspired her return to music in 2015 after seeing her perform at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. It motivated Adele to release another album (25). She recalled how Bush’s 16-year-old son once said he wanted to know why everyone loved her. She pictured her child and thought, “I don’t want to wait till my kid is 16, I want to show him now.” Like Bush, Adele has built a career on her own terms.

Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent)

St. Vincent begins All Born Screaming with “Hell Is Near”. It’s foreboding, with the kind of high drama and theatrics of Kate Bush. Clark blends high art with pop music, which is another Bushism. The angular funk and disco of “Digital Witness” masks its complexity in a groove so deep, if you’re not dancing, call the doctor.

Tori Amos

So much of Tori Amos’s music exists in a surreal place. She often speaks of the muses that guide her songs. The etherealness in Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” shares a similar celestial vibe. Amos, a piano prodigy, crafts pop music from intricate chords and unpredictable movements, which also mirrors the progressive phrases in Bush’s compositions (see again “Wuthering Heights”).

Chappell Roan

“Good Luck, Babe!” shares its art-pop DNA with Kate Bush’s synthy melodrama. Chappell Roan’s ethereal anthems sound like a destination reached. A shared experience in a world that often resembles a Shakespearean comedy (or tragedy, depending on the day). Part escape, part destination, but the “pop” in pop music is just mass human connection. Maybe Bush’s (and Roan’s) bold music is a way to help make joy not feel so alien. That is quite comforting, actually.

Photo by Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images