Babooshka (song)


"Babooshka" is a song by English singer Kate Bush, taken from her album Never for Ever. Released as a single in June 1980, it spent 10 weeks in the UK chart, peaking at number five. It was an even bigger hit in Australia, where it peaked at number two and was the 20th best-selling single of the year.

Background

According to an interview Kate Bush gave to the Australian TV series Countdown in 1980, the song chronicles a wife's desire to test her husband's loyalty. To do so, she takes on the nom de plume of Babooshka and sends notes to her husband in the guise of a younger woman—something which she fears is the opposite of how her husband currently sees her
The trap is set when, in her bitterness and paranoia, Babooshka arranges to meet her husband, who is attracted to the character who reminds him of his wife in earlier times. She thereby ruins the relationship due to her paranoia.
Bush cited the English folk song "Sovay", in which a woman dresses as a highwayman and accosts her lover in order to test his devotion, as an inspiration for the story of Babooshka. "I'm sure I heard about it on some TV series years ago, when I was a kid," Bush remarked of the song's story. "You know, these period things that the BBC do. I think it's an extraordinary thing for someone to do... That's why I found it fascinating."
The music video depicts Bush beside a double bass that symbolises the husband, wearing a black bodysuit and a veil in her role as the embittered wife. This changes into an extravagant, mythlike and rather sparse "Russian" costume as her alter-ego, Babooshka. An illustration by Chris Achilleos for the cover of the 1978 book Raven – Swordsmistress of Chaos was the basis for the costume.
The track features John Giblin on bass and marks the significance of fretless bass sounds as instrumental "male" partners through Kate's music in the early eighties.
The song ends with a sample of glass breaking, one of the earliest examples of a sample created with the newly-available Fairlight CMI digital synthesizer.
Kate Bush said that's "something I didn't realise at the time", when she learnt that ба́бушка is the Russian word for "grandmother".
"Babooshka" became Bush's second top five hit in the UK and was certified silver for sales of over 250,000 by the BPI.
"Babooshka" reached number five in France and went on to sell 547,000 copies, thus becoming 465th best-selling single of all time there.
The B-side contains her song "Ran Tan Waltz", her second non-album B-side. This song is performed as a tragicomedy, where Bush portrays a man bemoaning his bad luck in life being married to a wayward mother. This song uses the word "dick" in the first verse as cacophemism for a penis. Bush has stated that she does not typically use such harsh language or write such sexually explicit material, but that she considered the song "good naughty fun".

Track listing

  1. "Babooshka" – 3:28
  2. "Ran Tan Waltz" – 2:40

    Personnel