What is Kate Bush doing now? She might be working on an album with Big Boi

Kate Bush was a music pioneer unlike any other the UK had ever seen. At 19, she became the first female artist with a self-written No. 1 hit in the UK. That achievement would set the tone for an incredible music career. Not one to go with the flow, Bush experimented with music, almost creating her sub-genre in pop.
Her evocative lyrics also tackled contemporary issues, including sexuality, war, and environmental conservation. Bush became a favorite of both musicians and fans in the 20 years that she was most active. Let’s look at what Kate Bush is up to in 2021.
“My desire was never to be famous,” Kate Bush told Interview Magazine. “It was to try and create something interesting musically if I could.”
Bush first disappeared from public view in 1993. She welcomed her son, Albert, in 1998, a fact she held secret for nearly two years. She made her musical return in 2005 with an album titled Aerial.
Not one to tour after releasing an album, Kate retreated to South Devon, where she’d moved to in 2004. She took a nine-year break before returning to the stage with a 22-show concert at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, England.
Her first live show in 35 years sold out in 15 minutes online. People from all across the globe converged in London to witness a part-concert, part-theatre performance from Kate titled Before the Dawn.
Kate requested that the concert-goers commit the performances to memory as cameras were not allowed in the theatre. Therefore, you will not find those critically acclaimed shows on the internet. She talked to Maclean about the motivation behind banning phones during the show:
“We deliberately chose a small theatre so that the show was still intimate and the audience would become part of the show. Using telephones, they would be so intrusive and would really disrupt the show. I’ve had several people say they loved that. It made the show so much more of an event for them.”
Bush doesn’t have much use for a phone in her life as she rarely updates her social media pages. We know little of her personal life or political inclinations.
However, we know that her main priority is family. Big Boi of Outkast had dinner with Kate in 2007, and most of what she talked about was her son. “We talked mainly about our children… She wasn’t really recording at the time because she wanted to focus on her kid,” Big Boi told Complex.
Therefore, we suspect that Kate enjoys a private life with her husband Danny and their son Albert. It’s frustrating that we know very little about Kate’s personal life. However, Kate’s private life is in the public domain – you need only listen keenly to her music to decipher her secrets.
“My life and my work are very interlocked,” Kate said. “That’s partly why I like to keep my private life private.”
Many have complained about the years it takes before the next Kate Bush album debuts – a sentiment that Kate Bush shares. “It’s very frustrating the albums take as long as they do,” Kate told BBC Radio 4 in 2011. “I wish there weren’t such big gaps between them.”
Kate denied that perfectionism delays her releases. “I think it’s important that things are flawed; That’s what makes a piece of art interesting sometimes – the bit that’s wrong or the mistake you’ve made that’s led onto an idea you wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
Bush said that her new material is a ‘work in progress.’ Big Boi gave us hope for a new Kate Bush album when he talked to Complex in mid-2020. “And there’s a big surprise coming as well,” Big Boi said. “I can’t tell you all the details right now, but yeah, something is coming.”
Kate’s son, Albert, featured heavily in Bush’s 2014 concert. We might get a solo project from Albert before Kate releases something fresh. “I hope that if he [Albert] does [work on a solo project], he asks me to produce it, because I’d love to,” Kate told Maclean. “But he has his own life.”
For now, all we have is Kate’s old music, which we continue to dissect. Even though Kate’s music is old, her multi-layered lyricism means that we keep discovering new meanings to the songs decades after their release. In a 1992 interview, Bush said that it’s flattering that we cling on to her even when she gives us little:
“I think when you don’t give people anything, they make things up. It’s both flattering on lots of levels… The fact that people are still concerned about writing about me. The fact that they still remember me and are hanging onto me, it’s very flattering.”