Section one
The Work
Album by album, in order, with the studio detail that usually gets left out: the Fairlight, the home studio in Kent, the two very different sides of a 1985 record, the long silences between releases.
Read the album essaysAn unofficial fan journal
Kate Bush’s records, and the British habit of gathering over them.
Two subjects, one obsession. The first is the work itself: ten studio albums made largely on her own terms, from a teenage debut in 1978 to a snowbound record in 2011. The second is what listeners do about it, which in this country usually involves a village hall, a borrowed PA and far too much tea.
Everything here is written by people who have lived with these albums for years. We take the music seriously and the organising even more seriously, because the second one is where most fan projects quietly fall apart.
Original photography commissioned for this journal. We publish no images of Kate Bush and no record sleeves.
What you will find here
Three strands, and they keep running into each other
We started writing about the albums. Within a year we were writing about parking, public liability cover and where to hire a hundred chairs in Sheffield on a Sunday. Both halves belong on the same site.
Section two
The Gatherings
Mass dances on public parks, listening nights in back rooms, record fairs, quiz nights and the annual pilgrimage north. What actually happens at them, and what they cost to run.
See what people organiseSection three
The Craft
The unglamorous half: choosing a date, booking a hall, insurance, first aid, accessible entrances, telling people it exists. Written for someone who has never organised anything before.
Start with the beginner’s guide
The summer fixture
Several hundred people, one routine, and a great deal of red fabric
The mass tribute dance began in Brighton in 2013, when a group of performers taught a park full of strangers the choreography from the 1978 Wuthering Heights video. It has since become a summer fixture in dozens of cities, usually in July, usually raising money for a local cause, and almost always slightly chaotic in the best way.
We have been to a fair number of them. What surprises newcomers is how little dancing ability the day requires and how much of it is really about standing in a field with people who understand exactly why you are there.
Our guide covers what to wear if you are not confident in a leotard, how the rehearsals work, and how to bring a group without losing half of them at the station.
A listening night in a hired hall: the format that survives longest, because it costs almost nothing to run.
Start here
If you are new to the site, take these in order
Six pieces that between them explain what we write about, why we write about it this way, and how to do something with it yourself.
-
Hounds of Love, side by side The 1985 album, its pop half and its drowning half, and why the running order matters.
-
How to start a fan gathering From an idea in a group chat to twenty people in a room, in about eight weeks.
-
The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever What the mass dance is, where it came from, and how to take part without panicking.
-
The Kick Inside, and 1978 A nineteen year old at number one with a song she wrote herself, and what came next.
-
The planning checklist One page you can print, tick and hand to whoever volunteered to help.
-
Before the Dawn, 2014 Twenty two nights at Hammersmith, thirty five years after the first tour ended.
The short version
Four numbers we keep coming back to
1978First UK number one written and sung by the same woman
TenStudio albums released between 1978 and 2011
22Consecutive nights at Hammersmith in 2014
44Years between her first UK number one single and her second
Where we stand. This is a listeners’ site. It is not run by Kate Bush, by anyone who works with her, or by any label that has released her records, and nothing published here should be read as coming from her. We do not reproduce photographs, artwork or complete lyrics, and we do not sell anything. If you own material you believe we have used without permission, write to us through the about page and we will take it down while we look into it.