Song · Kate Bush
“Cloudbusting” by Kate Bush
From the album Hounds of Love (1985)
“Cloudbusting” by Kate Bush appears on 13 radio countdowns from 7 stations between 1985 and 2026. It was first released in 1985 on the album Hounds of Love. Its best result is #16 on the Studio Brussel De Eindafrekening 1985. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #118 alternative song of 1985 and #4,714 alternative song of all time.
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Kate Bush wrote, produced and sang "Cloudbusting," and as the second single from her fifth album, Hounds of Love, it proved 1985 had room for a pop song about a psychiatrist's rain machine. She took the idea from A Book of Dreams, Peter Reich's 1973 memoir, which moved her deeply: the grown-up Peter looks back on his boyhood with his father, Wilhelm Reich, on the family farm Orgonon, pointing the cloudbuster at the sky, then on the day his father was arrested and jailed and the son could do nothing to stop it.
The music marches like a heartbeat under a storm. The Medici Sextet saw away with fierce urgency, Stuart Elliott and Charlie Morgan drum like a military band, and a gang of backing singers, Paddy Bush and Del Palmer among them, roars behind her. She finally sang it live in 2014, closing her Before the Dawn residency with it.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | 16 | Studio Brussel Flanders, Belgium | Studio Brussel De Eindafrekening 1985 | 30 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | 515 | CFNY 102.1 The Edge | CFNY Top 1002 Songs of All-Time (1991 Edition) | 1002 |
| 2007 | 1891 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2008 Songs of All-Time (December 2007) | 2008 |
| 2008 | 1862 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2009 Songs of All-Time (December 2008) | 2009 |
| 2009 | 1898 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2010 Songs of All-Time (December 2009) | 2010 |
| 2010 | 1955 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2011 Songs of All-Time (December 2010) | 2011 |
| 2019 | 253 | KEXP | KEXP Listeners' Favorite Songs of All Time | 627 |
| 2020 | 767 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
| 2022 | 402 | KEXP | KEXP Top Songs of the Last 50 Years (1972-2022) | 491 |
| 2022 | 957 | WYEP | WYEP Countdown to Fall 2022 | 603 |
| 2023 | 286 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 850 Songs of the 1980s | 850 |
| 2023 | 1180 | WYEP | WYEP Countdown to Fall 2023 | 1229 |
| 2026 | 565 | WYEP | WYEP Greatest Songs of All Time | 1180 |
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