In her annual Christmas message, Kate Bush has expressed support for striking nurses in the United Kinggdom, lamented Queen Elizabeth II’s death and the Ukraine war, and furthered her (already quite extensive) celebration of Netflix’s Stranger Things. “It’s a bombardment—the horrific war in Ukraine, the famines, the droughts, the floods… and we lost our Queen,” she wrote. “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.”
As British nurses strike for better pay and working conditions, Bush said, “I hope that the nurses will be in a position where they are appreciated—they should be cherished.”
Of her resurgent classic “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”—an unlikely success story of 2022—Bush added, “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!”
She accompanied the statement with a photo of a robin, saying the “humble little bird” could “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.” Read the full message on her website.
