#cloud busting

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

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Arizona skies, 10/13/2025

Arizona skies, 10/13/25

writer Kate Bush

Seeeeeeeeeeee! [sirens wail] Alright, come out now chummy, we know you're in there.

Part of the UncoolTwo50 project, marking the best singles from 1977-99.

A story told through contemporary reviews, collated by rec.music.gaffa.

"In pop, Authenticity is what counts. Singing what you want to sing, no matter how stupid, instead of pandering to image or fashion. Kate Bush is an Authentic. An authentic hippy perhaps, but the public are now so hungry for that honesty that the very uncommercial "Hounds of Love" entered the charts at No. 1, whereas, just three years before, its equally off-the wall predecessor, "The Dreaming", languished in the cold. "Running Up That Hill" was "Hounds"' most obvious single. "Cloudbusting" -- the story of a man who invents a rain machine -- is blatantly an album track. Kate's luscious melodies are underpinned by a strident and remorseless chop of violins. But in a world of pretend groups like Eighth Wonder, even Kate's most indulgent honesty is refreshing. A No. 1."

— Martin Townsend, The Hit

"The song 'Cloudbusting' is said to be inspired by a book called 'A Book Of Dreams' and is about the relationship between a father and son. Our obscurity expert Sandy Robertson says this is undoubtedly the same book -- by Peter Reich about his unorthodox scientist father Wilhelm Reich -- which inspired Patti Smith's legendary song 'Birdland'. So there!"

— Snouds magazine

"SPOOKY singer Kate Bush's video team have been upset by a ghost. They had an eerie time in their four days of filming at the White Horse Hill beauty spot in Oxfordshire. "A local said yesterday, "They found it very disturing. They said they felt there was someone watching them all the time - but there was no one there." The hill is near Waylands Smithy where, according to legend, a ghostly blacksmith waits to shoe the horses of travellers. The seven-minute video is for Kate's new single 'Cloudbusting', which has just entered the charts. She plays 12-year-old Peter Reich, from whose Book of Dreams she drew the idea for the song."

— Daily Mirror

"Kate reminds me of those "astral" acquaintances I used to meet as a teenager on camping holidays -- unusual, unpredictable, but with a charm that always attracted me. Listen out for the stirring string section, an electric groove of Navajo red Indian drums and some British pomp rock. I'm a fan."

— Paul King, Smash Hits

"After the magnificent "Running Up That Hill", Kate returns with another dreamy breeze of a song. There's chugging strings, that soaring voice and a wonderfully evocative melody. Add to that a fascinating story line video and you've got another massive hit. Music to swoon by."

— Karen Swayne, Number 1

"The string sextet on "Cloudbusting" will wrap themselves round your nervous system and start to beat like a pulse, irresitibly. Kate's lyrics shift from harmless observations on weather conditions to glow in the dark yo-yos and hiding people from the government. The video apparently explains it all, but I really think she does this kind of thing deliberately, to be honest."

— Melody Maker

A personal note? Kate had always been on the fringes of my consciousness - a bizarre and slightly frightening witchy woman when she first appeared in 1978, a semi-regular on Swap Shop and Superstore, made unusual and vibrant contributions to Top of the Pops.

By 1985, I was properly into pop music, and able to properly listen to Kate's work. "Running up that hill" was impressive. "Cloudbusting" blew my mind. What is she on about? What is organon, how is she able to make it rain? The video, a little feature film with plot and story. Once heard, never forgotten…

… except by listeners to Simon Mayo's Identi-hit quiz in 1991. Day after day, the planks would guess how the clue was for something different: "See my baby jive", "Stop look and listen", "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts". Never got through on the phones, and the jackpot built up to unimaginable proportions - something like 33 record tokens, an alarm clock, CD wallet, CD player, portable television, and priceless signed photo of the producer.

The Utah Saints remembered it, and got Kate's blessing to release something good, "Something good". By the late 1990s "Cloudbusting" was remembered as a cultural treasure from a cultural treasure.

"And then, of course, there's Cloudbusting - not by an stretch of imagination the stuff of the typical pop single. For a start, its inspiration lay in A Book of Dreams, the childhood memories of Peter Reich, son of socialist Austrian psychologist Wilhelm "The Function of the Orgasm" Reich, who believed that with his invention, The Orgone Accumulator, he could alter the earth's climate and create rain on command. For the song's suitably cinematic video, in which Reich is eventually arrested by US authorities for transporting his contraption over state lines, Donald Sutherland played the scientist and Bush, in boyish drag, his son, adding knowing twist to the closing refrain of "Your son's coming out". More remarkably, by this point Bush's commercial fortunes had turned. In October 1985, Cloudbusting went straight into the Top 20 and Top of the Pops screened the strange promo in its entirety."