Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

England’s pop legend is renowned for esoterica. Her first hit, “Wuthering Heights,” was based on the 19th century Emily Bronte novel. The ambitious video for her 1985 song “Cloudbusting” featured actor Donald Sutherland as an inventor and the singer as his son. Bush’s latest album opens with a Middle Eastern-tinged version of her song “The Sensual World,” now with words from James Joyce’s Ulysses included in the lyrics. Other reworked songs, including the piano-laced “Moments of Pleasure,” are equally beguiling.

Artistic genius, or howling, lost-on-the-moor madwoman? Kate Bush has always defied description—and divided audiences along the way. As British author John Mendelssohn put it, when Bush “came out of of nowhere in 1978 with her jaw-droppingly eccentric debut single ‘Wuthering Heights,’ screeching like a banshee, flapping her arms as though trying to take wing, pulling alarming faces, people either adored or loathed her.” But absence has benefitted Bush. Since dropping out of the music world to raise a family, a massive cult has grown up around the reclusive, publicity-shy singer. There are now Kate Bush fashions and fan conventions, while the truly obsessive celebrate her birthday as “Katemas...