Why does Kate Bush mean so much to so many people?

Leaping around the living room to Kate Bush’s 1978 debut single ‘Wuthering Heights’ is one of English performer Sarah Louise Young's earliest memories.

In the one-woman cabaret show An Evening Without Kate Bush, Young performs some of Bush's greatest hits and pays tribute to her passionate fans.

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Although Kate Bush has released ten albums, the British pop icon rarely makes public appearances, does interviews or performs live, Young says.

An Evening Without Kate Bush was conceived as a way to fill the “gap” between fans’ demand for Bush and the enigmatic absence of the artist, she tells Culture 101.

Ironically, six months after Young and director Russell Lucas first started working on the show in 2013, the surprise re-emergence of Bush herself threw a spanner in the works.

When Bush announced she would play a run of 2014 shows at the Hammersmith Apollo - her first time on stage since 1979 - Young and Lucas became concerned people An Evening Without Kate Bush could appear to be “cynically cashing in” on her return.

But because Kate Bush fandom is usually for life, An Evening Without Kate Bush didn't suffer from sitting on the shelf till 2019.

While An Evening Without Kate Bush is a tribute show, sounding exactly like Bush wasn't Young's goal.

Alongside dance moves developed from hours of studying Kate Bush's music videos, Young manages to hit all the famous high notes in her " incredibly difficult to learn" songs.

So many of her songs are timeless, she says, such as the 1985 hit 'Running Up That Hill' which the Netflix series Stranger Things re-upped in 2022.

Others - like the haunting 1978 single ‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ which Bush wrote when she was just 13 - reveal Bush as an extraordinary artist with a powerful insight into the human psyche.

In An Evening Without Kate Bush, Young says she doesn't try to impersonate the singer but instead capture her unique “essence”.

“It's the ultimate piece of fan art.”

An Evening Without Kate Bush is touring Christchurch, Wanaka Dunedin, Oamaru, Nelson, Wellington, Napier, Kerikeri and Auckland from 30 March. You can find more information here.