Artist · chart history · #127 in alternative artist polls · #146 in indie & aaa artist polls
Kate Bush
Solo artist Welling
Kate Bush is an artist from Welling. Kate Bush has 238 chart appearances on 130 radio countdowns from 26 stations on RockLists, spanning 1985–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Running Up That Hill”, which appears on 83 lists with a best position of #2. The station that charted Kate Bush most often is CD101 (Columbus, OH), with 49 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2022.
Kate Bush was born in 1958 and started writing songs at 11, and by the time she was 19 she was the strangest and most thrilling new voice in British pop. EMI signed her after David Gilmour of Pink Floyd helped pay for a demo tape, and in 1978 her first single, "Wuthering Heights", spent four weeks at the top of the UK chart, making her the first woman to reach number one there with a song she'd written entirely herself. It's a swooping, spooky, wildly theatrical thing, sung in a voice that goes places no one else would dare, and her debut album, The Kick Inside, hit number three.
She kept pushing. Never for Ever in 1980 made her the first British solo woman to top the UK albums chart. From The Dreaming in 1982 on, she produced her records herself, and the results got deeper and weirder, full of odd sounds, unusual subject matter and a sense of drama she carried into dance-driven performances. She plays piano and guitar too, among other things.
Hounds of Love in 1985 is where it all came together. "Running Up That Hill" is the heart of it, a relentless, pulsing song driven by thundering drums and a synth line that sounds like a heartbeat under pressure. "Cloudbusting" and the title track are just as bold, and the album went to number one in Britain and topped two Billboard charts in America. The Sensual World in 1989 brought "Love and Anger" and "This Woman's Work", as tender a song as she's ever written, and The Red Shoes followed in 1993, with "Eat the Music", before a long silence that lasted until Aerial in 2005.
"Running Up That Hill" got a second life in 2022, when its use in Stranger Things made it her second UK number one and took it to number three on the Billboard Hot 100. She has collected a Brit Award, an Ivor Novello Award in 2002, a CBE in 2013 and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. On the countdowns, "Running Up That Hill" is the one listeners reach for, again and again.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Kate Bush on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Running Up That Hill#357 of all time | 83 | #2 | – | 2022 | |
| 2 | Wuthering Heights | 50 | #16 | – | – | |
| 3 | Hounds of Love | 16 | #62 | – | – | |
| 4 | Cloudbusting | 13 | #16 | – | 1985 | |
| 5 | This Woman's Work | 10 | #159 | – | – | |
| 6 | The Sensual World | 9 | #58 | – | 1989 | |
| 7 | Love and Anger | 6 | #11 | – | 1989 | |
| 8 | Eat The Music | 8 | #457 | – | – | |
| 9 | Rocket Man | 4 | #30 | – | 1991 | |
| 10 | Cloudbirsting | 10 | #724 | – | – | |
| 11 | King of the Mountain | 5 | #71 | – | 2006 | |
| 12 | The Man With The Child In His Eyes | 4 | #61 | – | – | |
| 13 | Sat in Your Lap | 2 | #344 | – | – | |
| 14 | Babooshka | 2 | #672 | – | – | |
| 15 | The Big Sky | 1 | #331 | – | – | |
| 16 | Rubberband Girl | 5 | #62 | – | 1993 | |
| 17 | Army Dreamers | 1 | #490 | – | – | |
| 18 | The Dreaming | 1 | #549 | – | – | |
| 19 | Wild Man | 1 | #82 | – | 2012 | |
| 20 | Breathing | 1 | #647 | – | – | |
| 21 | The Man With A Child In His Eyes | 1 | #964 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Featured on
Songs by other artists credited with Kate Bush as a guest.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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