Babooshka (song)
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| "Babooshka" | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Single by Kate Bush | |||||||||||||||||||
| from the album Never For Ever | |||||||||||||||||||
| B-side | "Ran Tan Waltz" | ||||||||||||||||||
| Released | 23 June 1980 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Format | 7" single | ||||||||||||||||||
| Recorded | 1979 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Genre | Art rock | ||||||||||||||||||
| Length | 3:19 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Label | EMI | ||||||||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Kate Bush | ||||||||||||||||||
| Producer | Kate Bush, Jon Kelly, John L Walters | ||||||||||||||||||
| Kate Bush singles chronology | |||||||||||||||||||
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"Babooshka" is a song by British singer Kate Bush, taken from her album Never for Ever. Released as a single on June 23, 1980 it spent 10 weeks in the UK chart, peaking at number five.[1] It was an even bigger hit in Australia, where it was the 20th best-selling single of the year.[2]
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[edit] Background
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[3] (Hence the barbed lines: "Just like his wife before she "freezed" on him / Just like his wife when she was beautiful...").[4]
The trap is set when, in her bitterness and paranoia, Babooshka arranges to meet her husband, who is attracted to the character that reminds him of his wife in earlier times. She thereby ruins the relationship due to her paranoia, according to Kate Bush's 1980 interview with the Australian TV series Countdown.[3]
The music video depicts Bush beside a double bass (contrabass) which symbolises the husband, wearing a black bodysuit and a veil in her role as the embittered wife.[3] This changes into an extravagant, mythlike and rather sparse 'Russian' costume as her alter-ego, Babooshka.
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.
Kate Bush said that's "something I didn't realise at the time,"[3] when she learnt that Babushka is the Russian word for "grandmother" (although the stress in Russian falls on the first syllable, not the second). The name of the song is repeated throughout the chorus and is harmonised at the end of the line with ya-ya.
[edit] B-side
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 an alcoholic mother. This song also signifies Bush's first use of an expletive in one of her recordings (the word "dick" as cacophemism for penis).[5]
[edit] Charts
| Chart (1980) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian chart | 1 |
| Dutch Singles Chart | 15 |
| German Singles Chart | 14 |
| Italian Singles Chart | 5 |
| Irish Singles Chart | 5 |
| New Zealand Singles Chart | 8 |
| Norwegian Singles Chart | 4 |
| UK Singles Chart | 5 |
[edit] Notes
- ^ Chartstats.com - "Babooshka" UK Chart details
- ^ "Babooshka" Australian charts
- ^ a b c d Kate Bush interviewed by Cheryl Wright in London in an October 1980 Count Down segment. Talking Babooshka
- ^ "Kate Bush Discography - Song Index - Babooshka". Gaffa.org. Archived from the original on 2007-11-22. http://web.archive.org/web/20071122120339/http://gaffa.org/discog/songs/babooshk.html.
- ^ "The Lyrics - "Ran Tan Waltz (original title, The Ran Tan)"". Gaffa.org. Archived from the original on 20067-10-18. http://web.archive.org/web/20061018051548/http://gaffa.org/sensual/l_rtw.html.
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