About The Song
“Cloudbusting” is a song written, produced and performed by English singer Kate Bush. It was released as a single in October 1985, and was the second single released from her fifth studio album Hounds of Love (1985). “Cloudbusting” peaked at No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart and spent eight weeks in the top 100.
Taking inspiration from the 1973 Peter Reich memoir A Book of Dreams, which Bush read and found deeply moving, the song is about the very close relationship between psychiatrist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and his young son, Peter, told from the point of view of the mature Peter. It describes the boy’s memories of his life with Reich on their family farm, called Orgonon, where the two spent time “cloudbusting”, a rain-making process which involved using a machine designed and built by Reich – a machine called a cloudbuster – to point at the sky. The lyrics further describes the elder Reich’s abrupt arrest and imprisonment, the pain of loss the young Peter felt, and his helplessness at being unable to protect his father.
In a retrospective review of the single, AllMusic journalist Amy Hanson praised the song for its “magnificence” and “hypnotic mantric effects”. Hanson wrote: “Safety and danger are threaded through the song, via both a thoughtful lyric and a compulsive cello-driven melody. Even more startling, but hardly surprising, is the ease with which Bush was able to capture the moment when a child first realizes that adults are fallible.”
In 2014, the song was performed live for the first time and was also chosen as the closing encore track in Bush’s 2014 live residency, Before the Dawn.
The B-side to the single was “Burning Bridge”, in which a woman desperately pleads with her lover to step up his level of commitment to her. The 12″ featured the additional track “My Lagan Love”, a traditional Irish melody with lyrics by John Carder Bush, Kate Bush’s brother. The 12″ version of “Cloudbusting” was a special remix called “The Organon Re-Mix” in which the verses were downplayed and the main focus was the development of the song’s chorus. In the US, this mix was issued as “The Meteorological Mix”, a title used in the UK for 12″ version of Bush’s later single “The Big Sky”.
Video
Lyrics
I still dream of Orgonon
I wake up crying
You’re making rain
And you’re just in reach
When you and sleep escape me
You’re like my yo-yo
That glowed in the dark
What made it special
Made it dangerous
So I bury it
And forget
But every time it rains
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when
But just saying it could even make it happen
On top of the world
Looking over the edge
You could see them coming
You looked too small
In their big, black car
To be a threat to the men in power
I hid my yo-yo
In the garden
I can’t hide you
From the government
Oh, God, daddy
I won’t forget
‘Cause every time it rains
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when
But just saying it could even make it happen, ohh
And every time it rains
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Look, your son’s coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when
But just saying it could even make it happen, ohh
Ooh, just saying it could even make it happen
Yeah-yeah-yeah-ohh
We’re cloudbusting, daddy
Yeah-yeah-yeah-yo
Yeah-yeah-yeah-ohh
Yeah-yeah-yeah-yo
Yeah-yeah-yeah-ohh
Your sun’s coming out
Yeah-yeah-yeah-ohh
Your son’s coming out