There’s no question that Kate Bush is one of the most unique and groundbreaking musicians of all time, so it shouldn’t be too surprising for anyone to learn that the iconic singer and composer made history on the charts.
Bush, who was 15 years old when Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour discovered her, became the first female solo artist to have an album debut on the U.K. Albums Chart at No. 1 when she released her third studio album, Never for Ever, on Sept. 20 in 1980, according to Classic Rock. It was also the first album (that wasn’t a compilation) by a British female solo artist to hit No. 1 in the U.K., as well as Bush’s first chart-topping album.
Never for Ever represented a “turning point” for Bush, as Rolling Stone pointed out in a piece ranking it #48 on a list of “The 80 Greatest Albums of 1980.”
“She got deeply into her synthesizers, using the brand-new Fairlight CMI sampler to open new vistas for her songwriting. Never for Ever showed how much her imagination thrived on this level of control — it led to her next two albums, The Dreaming and Hounds of Love, arguably her two best. ‘Breathing’ is her dark fantasy of an unborn baby contemplating the threat of nuclear war, wondering if she should linger in the womb longer; ‘The Infant Kiss’ is a ghost story where Bush plays a Victorian governess in a haunted house.”
Commercially, the biggest hit from Never for Ever was the song “Babooshka,” released as a single on June 27, 1980. It peaked at #5 on the U.K. chart, where it spent 10 weeks overall; in Australia, it went all the way to #2 and stayed there for three weeks.
As Bush once explained on Australian TV, “Babooshka” tells the tale of a wife who challenges her husband’s fidelity by sending him “scented letters” from another, imaginary woman. Alas, the husband becomes so obsessed with the nonexistent admirer that the marriage falls apart.
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Interestingly enough, the song was somewhat erroneously titled. Bush explained later that she didn’t realize the Russian word for grandmother was “babushka” and was actually thinking of the traditional Russian stacking doll known as a “matryoshka.” To make the sound of breaking glass at the end of the track, Bush smashed some actual crockery at Abbey Road studios and recorded the noise for a sample. (She later sent chocolates to the studio’s kitchen staff as an apology.)
Bush, who famously took inspiration from great works of literature, also cited the traditional English folk song “Sovay” as an inspiration for “Babooshka.” As she told Interview in 2011, “very few” of her songs “really have any sort of autobiographical content,” though she acknowledged that “whatever is going on in your life when you’re writing has to somehow seep into your work.”
“And maybe if my songs feel personal, that’s very nice. I like that. I take that as a great compliment,” she continued. “But I think what is great is that if anything that I do is interesting to somebody else, then I really don’t think it matters at all what I had originally intended. If people like the song, or they can draw some feeling from it, then I’m really happy about that. Quite often, lyrics get misunderstood — and I never mind that either. I guess what all artists want is for their work to touch someone or for it to be thought provoking.”
Bush certainly got what she wanted, as generations of fans would agree.
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