“Cloudbusting” is a song that was written, produced and performed by the British singer Kate Bush. It was the second single released from her no.1 1985 album Hounds of Love. “Cloudbusting” peaked at no.20 in the UK Singles Chart.
The song is about the very close relationship between psychologist 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 pointing at the sky a machine designed and built by Reich, called a cloudbuster. The lyric further describes Wilhelm Reich’s abrupt arrest and imprisonment, the pain of loss the young Peter felt, and his helplessness at being unable to protect his father. The song was inspired by Peter Reich’s 1973 memoir, “A Book of Dreams”, which Bush read and found deeply moving.
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.”
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