This new episode of The Kate Bush Fan Podcast is the third and final installment from Bush Telegraph celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Dreaming – arguably, Kate Bush’s most forward-thinking album. Paul and Darrell introduce this episode, and then Darrell chats with Nick Launay, Kate’s prolific engineer at Townhouse Studios. His collaboration with Kate created a synergy of ideas that ended up on this iconic album. Exclusive stories are heard on this podcast, where we get an expanded view of how these almost operatic tracks were produced, including more details of the title track. As an added bonus, we also get to hear how ‘Lord Of The Reedy River’ (b-side to the first single ‘Sat In Your Lap’) was recorded next to a dank pool under the studio floorboards. And if that doesn’t whet your appetite, which we’re sure it will, find out who Kate nearly recorded a duet with. Thanks again to Nick Launay, also known for his work with other great artists such as Nick Cave, Public Image Ltd., Lou Reed, Talking Heads and Arcade Fire.
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Kate has posted a very thoughtful message on her official site this evening reflecting on a year of highs and lows and ending on a beautiful, hopeful note. Happy Christmas to you, Kate, an amazing year for your music around the world.
Merry Christmas
Every year seems to fly by a little faster. They say this happens as you get older, but there’s no doubt that the speed of life is accelerating at a greater rate than ever. I don’t think any of us have ever known a year like this one. Life became incredibly frightening in the pandemic, but just as we think it might be over soon, it seems to keep going. It’s a bombardment – the horrific war in Ukraine, the famines, the droughts, the floods… and we lost our Queen. Many of my friends were surprised at how upset they were at her death especially as we aren’t royalists, but I think her passing became a focus for grief, for unexpressed loss that so many people had felt during the pandemic. It’s been a crazy, roller coaster year for me. I still reel from the success of RUTH, being the No 1 track of this summer. What an honour! It was really exciting to see it doing so well globally, but especially here in the UK and Australia; and also to see it making it all the way to No 3 in the US. It was such a great feeling to see so many of the younger generation enjoying the song. It seems that quite a lot of them thought I was a new artist! I love that! Again, thank you so much to everyone who supported the track and made it a hit. I wonder where on earth we’ll all be at the end of next year? I hope the war will end. I hope that the nurses will be in a position where they are appreciated – they should be cherished. Let’s all hope that next year will be better than this one. I keep thinking about hope and how it was the last to fly out of Pandora’s box. Sometimes it’s all that seems to glow in the dark times we find ourselves in right now. I used a little robin in some of my Christmas gifts to friends this year. I felt that this humble little bird, which symbolises Christmas could also symbolise hope in the context of Emily Dickinson’s beautiful words: Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. I‘d like to think that this Christmas when joy is so hard to find, hope will perch in all our souls. Merry Christmas! All best wishes, Kate
As 2022 draws to a close, various charts and sites have been looking back at the big selling singles and tracks this year and we are reminded once again of the breathtaking success of what is now Kate’s biggest ever global hit single – Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Just to remind ourselves, Kate had the biggest song in the world on the official global charts for three weeks this summer, and so, so much more No.1 success around the world which also included her triumphant 3-week return to the top of the UK singles charts and her biggest ever hit in the USA. The Ringer has recently described it as the most important song of the year and “the song that dominated the zeitgeist more than any other in 2022” calling it “a genuine sensation that people inside the industry and out couldn’t stop talking about.” Google year end search results have Kate as one of the most searched terms in music for 2022. On the music search app, Shazam, Running Up That Hill was the 12th most searched for song of 2022 globally.
Kate has placed at No.18 on the Billboard Global 200 for the year, meaning she had one of the biggest selling singles in the whole world this year. She also places at No.23 in the US Billboard Hot 100for all of 2022. Kate could well also place in the Top 10 of 2022 on the UK Official chart when those figures are released. On the world’s largest streaming music service, Spotify, Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) was the 10th most-played song for the whole year AND the No.1 “throwback” song globally (defined by Spotify as songs originally released over 20 years ago). Kate’s song saw a 8,700% increase in Spotify streams this year, and currently has been streamed over 820 million times. In the UK it was the 4th most streamed track of 2022 on Spotify, and the 8th most streamed song on Spotify USA. The music video has been viewed over 150 MILLION times on Youtube.
On the video streaming platform, Tiktok, where Kate has a huge following among younger site users, Running Up That Hill was in the Top 10 most popular songs in both the US and the UK for all of 2022. And look out for a (groan worthy) joke about Kate in Christmas crackers if this Top Ten of topical 2022 jokes is to be believed!
To hear the full story of Kate’s incredible year, the charts, the No.1s, the world records, the media reaction, the excitement, Kate’s own reactions and much more, don’t miss our podcast episode on The Summer of Kate here!!
In this new Kate Bush Fan Podcast episode, Bush Telegraph duo (Darrell in the States and Paul in the UK) continue to discuss Kate’s fourth album The Dreaming, in their second installment celebrating the 40th anniversary of this iconic album. As school friends, they bought the album on the day of its release, and the next day met Kate at the album signing in London. We hear more snippets of their experiences in 1982, but the major part of this podcast is Darrell’s interview with Teri Reed, senior engineer at Odyssey Studios. Teri talks about his collaboration with Kate, as Odyssey was one of the studios she used for The Dreaming. We find out, not surprisingly, what a generous and warm colleague she was, as well as the extraordinary levels she went to, to get the right sound for a track. For example, why was Teri coaxed into a car park to find a specific sound she needed? All will be revealed. That, and a whole lot more. The final and third episode to follow will be an interview with Nick Launay, another collaborator with Kate. Enjoy!
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Today we wish our friend, Del Palmer, a very happy birthday as he celebrates his 70th! We hope you know how much you are loved and respected by all the fans, Del, and how thrilled we are for the success you shared in this year with Running Up That Hill taking over the world – you can be so proud of your work with Kate, truly astounding.
With love and hugs from, Seán, Krys, Peter and Dave xxx
Another very special Kate Bush Fan Podcast! In the second part of Seán’s conversation with Kate’s brother, John Carder Bush, he talks about his involvement in Kate’s career, the 1979 tour, his famous video set and album/single cover photographs, the poetry books, novels and photo books he has published, his collaborations with Vivienne Chandler, his involvement in the Japanese martial art of Kyudo, the re-grouping of the Salatticum Poets in the 21st century, his return to the Jig of Life narration for Before the Dawn – and a lot more! [Part one of this conversation is here]
You can subscribe to the Kate Bush Fan Podcast on iTunes or Spotify or on any podcast app you happen to use, such as Stitcher or Tunein or listen below on Soundcloud.
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Thanks to everyone who entered our Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush book giveaway competition, we had hundreds of entries and the successful winner has been notified! As a thank you for your interest in the book (see our enthusiastic review here) the author, Tom Doyle, has decided to exclusively share an unpublished chapter (or “vision”) from the book. You can DOWNLOAD the chapter here (PDF format) or read it in full below. The book is published today and has already received glowing reviews from the likes of Mojo Magazine (4/5), Record Collector (4/5) and Uncut Magazine (9/10). Tom writes:
Hello folks,
So, my Kate book is out today. It was very much a labour of love for me, and quite some trip to write. I’ve never laughed or “twinkled” as often as I did when writing this book, so I very much hope you enjoy.
There was one “lost” chapter that ended up on the cutting-room floor. So, here it is as an exclusive for Kate Bush News.
In the 1980s, for a generation of future musicians, Kate Bush’s 1986 hits collection, The Whole Story, was their portal into the world of her songs. Scottish singer Emma Pollock – of Glasgow indie rock band The Delgados, and a solo artist in her own right – was 15 years old when Bush’s singles collection was released. It made a huge impression on her.
‘It goes back to my mum introducing me to Kate Bush’s music in the late ‘70s,’ she says. ‘She adored “Wuthering Heights”. But I bought The Whole Story with my own Christmas money, and I just had an absolute love affair with that album.
‘For kids, compilations are amazing, because they provide a point of access, and you don’t have to grapple with the artist’s song choices when it comes to an album, and how they might be slightly difficult for a kid. I think compilations hit the sweet spot for someone who suspects they’re a fan but kind of needs it confirmed.’
Similarly, in Sunderland, brothers Peter and David Brewis, later to combine their vocal and multi-instrumentalist talents in their art rock band Field Music, were surrounded by Kate Bush’s songs at home when they were kids.
‘I was only six or seven,’ says David. ‘But I intrinsically knew all of the songs on The Whole Story. And I probably knew all the songs on the first side of Hounds of Love. But I don’t think you understand the second side until you’ve passed eight years old (laughs).’
‘Growing up, Kate Bush was just part of the musical fabric of the household,’ says Peter, by four years the elder brother. ‘Those records were just around all the time. And they definitely became part of my idea about what music is meant to be. It’s the idea of this synthesis of various things to create your own music.’
In 2016, Emma Pollock was approached by the organisers of the True North music festival in Aberdeen with the idea of her staging a show involving a line-up of guest singers exploring the music of Joni Mitchell. ‘Even though I love Joni Mitchell, I actually wanted to do Kate Bush,’ she says. ‘So, I kind of countered with that. And they said, ‘Yeah, sounds great.’”
Yes, we all adore our immense HomeGround Anthology books and swoon at John Carder Bush’s essential Kate: Inside the Rainbow but the prospect of another more traditional biography of Kate might not exactly excite longtime fans – a quick glance at my own bookshelf here confirms that there have indeed been many, many attempts over the years to tell the story of Kate’s career in book-form with varying degrees of success; Graeme Thomson’s twice-revised Under The Ivy being far and away the best of the bunch. So, when we heard this Summer that a new book by respected British music journalist Tom Doyle would be surfacing with the title “Running Up that Hill – 50 Visions of Kate Bush” and that it would take the form of a “mosaic biography”, it did at first sound like it might be a tired, cobbled together clippings rehash to cash-in on Kate’s phenomenal global hit single this year – thankfully, this is not the case.
Instead, this excellent book, published on October 27th, is easily one of the best yet written about Kate’s career – surprisingly refreshing, full of new details and insights, and earnestly crafted with obvious respect and serious admiration for the subject matter without ever leaning into all-out hagiography. As with Graeme Thomson’s lauded biography, you come away with the feeling that Doyle “gets it” and clearly enjoyed shining a light on many carefully chosen aspects of Kate’s output over the years. As a writer for Mojo Magazine, Doyle was granted a very significant exclusive in 2005, spending a day with Kate at her home to conduct what would be the first and most in-depth interview she would do to promote her return with the Aerial album. Little wonder that he uses much unpublished detail from this charming encounter to form the spine of his book structure.
Presented as 50 chapters or “visions”, the traditional chronological biography approach is (sensibly) still present, but the “multi-faceted” aspect highlighted in the book publicity has freed up the author to include “Guest Testimony” chapters (with new contributions from the likes of David Gilmour, writer Ian Rankin and photographer Guido Harari) as well as dipping into interviews and transcribed TV appearances and much fascinating fresh interview material; Kate’s brother John Carder Bush describes his unforgettable Rackham-inspired photography of a young Kate that would be included in his Cathy book. Gilmour’s fresh account of the recording of the demos in the 1970s is riveting stuff. Video directors Paul Henry and Julian Doyle discuss the making of the videos for The Dreaming (shot in a day), There Goes a Tenner and the iconic Cloudbusting film. There’s even an unexpectedly welcome exploration with Utah Saints about their dance smash Something Good in 1992. I was very pleased to see Doyle allowing his “visions” structure to devote entire chapters to some of Kate’s artistic peaks; Pull Out The Pin, Under The Ivy, Moments of Pleasure, A Coral Room and the filmed And Dream of Sheep are among those duly given this special spotlight treatment.
Throughout, Doyle writes wonderfully about his subject matter, describing the Kate Bush he met as “steely, gently controlling, painfully self-critical, and also the first person to happily puncture the reverential bubble that surrounds her.” In his introductory chapter he states that his book is: “…designed to be a multifaceted portrait of Kate Bush: illuminating from fifty different angles the girl who lived in her imagination, reluctantly became famous because of it, then had to deal with unwanted outside forces, before battling on and emerging triumphant, to become one of the most groundbreaking, idiosyncratic and singular artists of our time.” Highly recommended.
COMPETITON TIME! The lovely people at Bonnier / Nine Eight Books have given us a copy of Running Up That Hill – 50 Visions of Kate Bush to give away! To be in with a chance, just answer the following question:
Who introduced Kate’s only ever TV performance of Under The Ivy in April 1986?
Please send your answer to 50visions@katebushnews.com – if you are successful we will then be in touch by email to get your details for getting the book to you. The competition runs till the end of Wednesday October 26th at which point the random draw will be made. Good luck!
COMPETITION RULES: COMPETITION STARTS OCTOBER 20TH 2022 AND ENDS OCTOBER 26TH, 2022 AT 23:59 (GMT). ONE ENTRY PER PERSON. MULTIPLE ENTRIES, THE REGISTRATION OF MULTIPLE EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR ONE PERSON AND INCOMPLETE ENTRIES WILL RESULT IN DISQUALIFICATION. KATEBUSHNEWS.COM IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TIMELINESS OF DELIVERY OR ELECTRONIC OR COMPUTER MALFUNCTIONS THAT MAY AFFECT THE DELIVERY OR CONTENT OF ENTRY. WINNER WILL BE SELECTED IN A RANDOM DRAW FROM ALL ELIGIBLE ENTRIES ON OR ABOUT OCTOBER 27TH, 2022. WINNER WILL BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL. IF WINNER CANNOT BE REACHED WITHIN 3 DAYS OF NOTIFICATION, AN ALTERNATE WINNER WILL BE SELECTED. ODDS OF WINNING DEPEND ON NUMBER OF ELIGIBLE ENTRIES RECEIVED. PRIZE IS NON-TRANSFERABLE AND NON-EXCHANGEABLE. NO SUBSTITUTION OR CASH EQUIVALENT WILL BE MADE. ALL DECISIONS OF KATEBUSHNEWS.COM IS FINAL. WINNER SHOULD ALLOW 6 WEEKS FOR DELIVERY OF PRIZE.
Kate has posted a message remembering her friend, the wonderful actor Robbie Coltrane, who died on Friday, aged 72. Robbie’s voice (“You must wake up!”) can be heard among those trying to rouse Kate from sleep in Waking The Witch. In 2011, he starred in the official music video for Deeper Understanding. He played the actor playing the subject matter of Kate’s song “Ken” in the Comic Strip Presents film, G.L.C. For millions around the world, of course, he’ll be known as the loveable giant Hagrid in the Harry Potter films as well as starring in the BAFTA-winning UK TV series, Cracker. Kate’s message from her official site:
Robbie
I was very upset to hear the news about Robbie. I’m really grateful that he agreed to star in a video that we made some years ago. It was incredibly exciting to watch him at work and to be in the presence of his deeply profound intelligence and earthy wit. He was so much fun. I’m really going to miss him. I had so much respect for his many talents and his generosity of spirit. We’ve lost one of our great treasures… Kate
In this new episode of The Kate Bush Fan Podcast, Darrell and Paul (The Bush Telegraph) start a three-part series all about ‘The Dreaming’ album, as we celebrate its 40th anniversary. In the first episode they discuss the excitement of its release when they were young teenagers, including the first time they met Kate at the Virgin Megastore album signing. Each track is discussed, as well as quotes from Kate about the album and reviews from the press. The following episodes will have exclusive interviews with Teri Reed, engineer at Advision Studios and Nick Launay, engineer at Townhouse Studios. You will not want to miss these, as new light is shed on each of the album tracks, as well as ‘Lord of the Reedy River’, b-side to ‘Sat In Your Lap’. Fun anecdotes of their work with Kate are also shared. Happy Dreaming!…
You can subscribe to the Kate Bush Fan Podcast on iTunes or Spotify or on any podcast app you happen to use, such as Stitcher or Tunein or listen below on Soundcloud.
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In this very special episode, Seán chats with Kate’s eldest brother, the poet, writer and photographer, John Carder Bush at his home in South East London. A dream come true! In this first part, we talk about John’s early life, how he developed his writing, his days playing in folk bands in London (with a young Kate taking notes), forming the Salatticum Poets with his great friends Tony Buzan and Jeremy Cartland, the story behind “Nicholas Wade” and so much more! Part two coming next week.
You can subscribe to the Kate Bush Fan Podcast on iTunes or Spotify or on any podcast app you happen to use, such as Stitcher or Tunein or listen below on Soundcloud.
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In this detailed new episode of The Kate Bush Fan Podcast Seán packs an hour looking back over all the amazing landmark events of Summer 2022 when Kate’s song Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) was featured on Stranger Things and became her biggest ever global smash hit – all the summer chart news, the reaction from Kate, the media and the fans! A souvenir of an extraordinary few months.
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Acclaimed author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman, has released his book, The Collectors, as a slim 80-page hardback edition illustrated by Tom Duxbury. It’s well known that Kate and Philip are friends and mutual admirers of each other’s work (Kate famously recorded the song Lyra for the film adaptation of Pullman’s The Golden Compass). Kate is mentioned in the dedication at the start of the book as having inspired it!
“Filled with the magic of Pullman’s assured pen, this glorious new tale set in the universe of His Dark Materials sees an art-collecting Oxford academic acquire two imposing paintings…on a dark winter’s night in 1970, Horley and Grinstead huddle for warmth in the Senior Common Room of a college in Oxford. Conversation turns to the two impressive works of art that Horley has recently added to his collection. What the two men don’t know is that these pieces are connected in mysterious and improbable ways; and they are about to be caught in the cross-fire of a story which has travelled time and worlds.“
We’ve been celebrating the 40th Anniversary of The Dreaming on our Facebook page with videos of the 5 singles from Kate’s incredible 1982 album. It was released on September 13th 1982. I wrote about it in the special new 40th Anniversary Issue of HomeGround Magazine (available free here). Also coming this month is a two-part Bush Telegraph podcast episode all about The Dreaming album with some very special guest interviewees. Here’s some of what I wrote:
“Earlier this year I was contacted by the editor of one of the UK’s major music magazines, asking to pick my brains about a Kate Bush cover article they were hoping to run. For a change, they were mulling over doing a cover feature on The Dreaming album, 2022 being the 40th anniversary of the album’s release (almost impossible to believe). As we have seen over the last decade, having Kate on the cover of a music monthly can shift a healthy amount of magazines but typically those feature articles will focus on Kate’s very early career, the live 1979 tour or the perennial favourite album – Hounds of Love.
I was emphatically enthusiastic about the cover idea and reeled off a list of reasons to the editor why Kate’s extraordinary, ground-breaking fourth studio album still deserved every bit as much attention from the music press as the beloved Hounds of Love – it was indeed time for them to recontextualise this darkly complex, astonishing record. It was the first album Kate produced entirely by herself and of course many of you reading this still regard it as her greatest masterpiece out of a triumvirate of her most acclaimed works that includes Hounds of Love and Aerial. The daring, complex experimentations within are not fumbling towards something more accomplished, they are often more startling than those on Hounds of Love itself. The complexity and inventiveness are insane. In the wider world, The Dreaming is normally mentioned as the album she had to make in order to go on to create her “true” masterpiece, Hounds of Love, but many fans feel it mightily holds up all by itself. This is the one that meant she had “broken free of pop stardom’s strait-jacket, to infiltrate the ranks of art-rock aristocrats” as The Quietus put it. It was Never For Ever that was surely the essential transitional work – The Dreaming was her arrival at an amazing new place in her career, a seismic shift.
There’s so much fascinating drama and intensity around this particular record’s creation and reception. Kate was only about 22 when she wrote the songs and 24 when she released it, but she still had the guts to produce it herself – she was utterly driven to do that. Years after release we still get insights into the making of the record from some of those that were there – Graeme Thomson did a good job in his Under The Ivy biography getting new insights from studio types like Hugh Padgham, Nick Launay and Paul Hardiman. I imagine what it would be like to have been a fly on the wall during the concentrated experimentation of those sessions across expensive London studios like Townhouse, Abbey Road and Advision on Gosfield Street (hence the “Gosfield Goers” credit) as Kate figured out the new technology and sound possibilities at her disposal – the Fairlight, gated reverb drum patterns, the undeniable influence of Peter Gabriel’s studio work. Crafting layers of utterly new, and to some listeners, baffling soundscapes to press forward her post-Never For Ever ambitions. “I was using different instruments, and everything was changing; and I felt that really the best thing to do would be to make this album a real departure – make it completely different. And the only way to achieve this was to sever all the links I had had with the older stuff”
“Game changer”. “Jarring”. “Cinematic”. “Pulsating”. “Obsessional”. “Thunderous”. “Sonic Assault”. Wading through the word salad that exists to try to describe The Dreaming album makes one thing clear – forty years later, this remains a record you can’t be apathetic about….
…the Uncut magazine cover feature that eventually surfaced in February this year was, refreshingly, not a re-hashed archive article – a considerable line-up of people involved in the creation of Kate’s dark masterpiece are interviewed by writer Peter Watts, including Preston Heyman, Paul Hardiman, Richard Burgess, Brian Bath, Roy Harper, Hugh Padgham, Dave Lawson, Howard Gray, Danny “Dan Dan the Sushi Man!” Dawson, and Teri Reed…
In 2014 on a BBC documentary Del did finally reveal the truth behind the mystery man on the cover of the record, the ‘Harry Houdini’ that Kate is passing the key to – yes, it was Del himself. A great rehearsal shot of Kate (with key on tongue) and Del in the same pose (Del donning a fetching knitted jumper) appears in the stunning book of photographs Kate: Inside the Rainbow by John Carder Bush. John described the final shot thus: “A slightly cloudy day outside in the kitchen garden at the back of our parents’ house. Apart from Kate looking very beautiful, the ivy behind her is wonderfully textured and full of hidden spaces and shadows amongst the glossy leaves themselves. Ivy may look wonderful, but it likes to slowly strangle any tree it lives on. It’s not poisonous, and in ancient times a poet’s crown was made of ivy.”
…it’s interesting to wonder how Kate feels about The Dreaming album now, from this perspective. In the intervening years she’s been asked far more frequently about Hounds of Love, and it’s obvious that her follow-up to The Dreaming is one she’s very pleased with. No song from The Dreaming was performed live on stage in 2014, although an understanding of how the show came to be structured mostly explains that omission. Guitarist David Rhodes let us know that yes, Kate did initially want to do Sat in Your Lap for Before the Dawn but then this got switched out for Top of the City and, sadly, her 1981 single never made the rehearsal stage – we can only imagine. In the 90’s she recalled looking back at that record “and it seems mad. I heard it about three years ago and couldn’t believe it. There’s a lot of anger in it. There’s a lot of ‘I’m an artist, right!’” With that in mind it’d be fascinating to know how Kate felt relatively recently, listening back to the sparkling new version of The Dreaming she worked on with James Guthrie for her 2018 Remastered project. It remains, a very special treat for our earholes – and in this 40th anniversary year in particular we just need to remember to “Play it Loud”
Filmmaker Mary McCartney has debuted her film about the legendary Abbey Road Studios, If These Walls Could Sing, at the Telluride film festival. The documentary includes interviews with members of Pink Floyd, Elton John, Kate, Ringo Starr and Mary’s father, Paul McCartney. From classical to pop, film scores to hip-hop, “If These Walls Could Sing” explores the breadth, diversity, and ingenuity of Abbey Road Studios. Intimate interviews with leading artists, producers and composers paired with vivid archive footage and session tapes give exclusive access to these famously private studios. From Elton John to Jacqueline Du Pre to Jimmy Page, from Kate Bush to Paul McCartney to Celeste, all found their musical language in Abbey Road Studios. Audiences will experience the creative magic that makes it a revered and sacred space that still produces many of the most recognised records today and makes Abbey Road the most famous and longest-running studio in the world.
Variety writes: “Kate Bush makes a rare modern appearance in the documentary, albeit audio-only. “It’s amazing having Kate in there because she produced her third album there, directed her video in there… I kind of made contact with her. I know she doesn’t do interviews, but I know she feels real affection for Abbey Road, so over time she kindly agreed to do an audio piece that she wrote and sent to me. Just having her voice talking about the space is pretty special as well.” In the Variety review of the film, they note that “resurgent star Kate Bush talks about the studio’s historic reluctance to repaint, lest even the slightest alteration affect the sound…”
If These Walls Could Sing will be streaming on Disney+ at a date to be announced