Kate Bush has reflected on the tumultuous events of 2022 in a poignant Christmas message posted on her official website.
While the chart-topping singer is known for rarely speaking publicly and largely staying out of the limelight, she made an exception on Wednesday as she shared a festive message with her fans.
“Every year seems to fly by a little faster,” she wrote. “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.”
Looking back at the major news events of 2022, including the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the Wuthering Heights singer continued: “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.”
On a more personal note, Kate also spoke about the “roller coaster” that came about when her hit Running Up That Hill reached number one almost 40 years after its original release, thanks to the Netflix series Stranger Things.
“I still reel from the success of RUTH, being the number one track of this summer,” she admitted. “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 number three 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!”
She ended her post with a message of solidarity for striking nurses, pondering: “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!”
Following the resurgence of Running Up That Hill in the summer, Kate previously gave a rare interview with the BBC’s Woman’s Hour, admitting she was still “shocked” by the track’s success.
“What’s really wonderful I think is this is a whole new audience who, in a lot of cases, they’ve never heard of me and I love that,” she explained.
“The thought of all these really young people hearing the song for the first time and discovering it is, well, I think it’s very special.”