Some artists are so far ahead of their time, it can take critics a while to catch up. But the issue when Kate Bush emerged in the late-70s was different. She was unlike any British artist before or since - a complete original - and, if anything, she was accused of being behind the times, not ahead of them.

Her debut single, Wuthering Heights, came out in 1978 - after the punk explosion - to much head-scratching from the press. As the Guardian reported, "Her odd combo of artiness and artlessness, and the way she came across in interviews - at once guileless and guarded - made her a target for music-press mockery. Her music was often dismissed as a middlebrow soft option, easy listening with literary affectations."

The assault was typified by Charles Shaar Murray of the NME in a review of a 1979 gig, which he described as "all the unpleasant aspects of David Bowie in the Mainman era.... [Bowie manager] Tony DeFries would've loved you seven years ago, Kate, and seven years ago maybe I would've too. But these days I'm past the stage of admiring people desperate to dazzle and bemuse, and I wish you were past the stage of trying those tricks yourself."

The public paid no attention. Wuthering Heights was a No.1, and Kate had two other Top 10s before 1980 was over. Come her second flurry of hits in the mid-80s, with songs like Running Up That Hill and Hounds of Love, the press made a dramatic U-turn. Kate suddenly became critically adored, as well as commercially successful.