Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush

The updated 2024 version of Thomson’s biography of Kate Bush (first published in 2010) is one of the most extensively researched and thorough accounts of the life and career of the English musician. Thomson explores Bush’s life and rich family musical upbringing, sharing insights from her childhood that influenced her musical career. Bush keeps her private life relatively under wraps, so the strength of Thomson’s book is his meticulous research and interviews with over 50 people who have been part of Bush’s decades-long career. With her first songs written before she was a teen and her first single topping the UK charts when she was only 19, Bush and her music, how she worked and struggled in the male-dominated industry, and how she wrote, produced, performed, and created music on her own terms are all explored here. Bush has had no live performances or new work since 2014, but the updated version of the biography addresses renewed interest in Bush since the use of “Running Up That Hill” on the soundtrack for Netflix’s Stranger Things and her 2023 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.