Born in Kent, to an Irish mother and an English father, Kate taught herself to play the piano and started writing songs around the age of ten. She began composing original music while still in her early teens, cutting her first demo in the mid-1970s.

At sixteen she signed with EMI Records, left school and moved to London to study contemporary dance. In 1977 Kate recorded her debut album, Kick Inside, then released her first single Wuthering Heights in 1978. The album was a huge critical and commercial success in Britain, selling over a million copies; Bush, not yet 18, was a superstar.

Her 1979 follow-up Lionheart was supported by what turned out to be Bush's only live tour - though she has since made rare public appearances, mostly for charity, Kate Bush has not toured in nearly 20 years, making her one of the more iconoclastic musicians of recent decades. After this tour in, she became more involved with producing, eventually building her own recording studio, and she is now one of the few women to take full creative control in the studio.

Bush returned to the British charts in 1980 with Never For Ever and its Top 5 spin-off single Babooshka. Following 1982's The Dreaming, Bush began producing her own albums, marking her independence with 1985's Hounds Of Love.

The single Running Up That Hill reached the Top 5 in Britain and broke Bush in the U.S., where it entered the Top 40. In 1989 she returned with The Sensual World, followed by 1993's Red Shoes, her first album to reach the U.S. Top 30.Kate released a short musical film, 'The Line, the Cross and the Curve', in 1993 - revealing yet another aspect of her Renaissance artistic nature.

With a fiercely loyal cult following on both sides of the Atlantic, Kate Bush continues to pursue her music, ignoring trends and industry pressures and all the while inspiring other artists, such as Tori Amos. Her most recent release was a 1994 live album recorded during the late 1970s.