Indie artist Katie Malco has covered Kate Bush’s literature-inspired 1985 single “Cloudbusting.” The latest project follows Malco’s debut album Failures, which arrived in June of 2020.
Malco reimagines “Cloudbusting’’ through the lens of the pandemic. She shortens the five-minute cult hit to a folky, stripped-down track clocking in at just over three minutes that tonally captures the singer/songwriter’s interpretation of Bush’s lyrics.
Malco said of her take on “Cloudbusting:”
”Cloudbusting” was the song that made me understand Kate Bush. I’d never truly got her before I heard it, and it really was a gateway for me. Although it’s lyrically pretty dense (it’s based on Peter Reich’s A Book of Dreams), when I first listened to it as a young girl, I interpreted it differently, particularly the chorus. I took away from it this deep feeling of looking forward with optimism and a meeting of the past and the future—melancholy yet hopeful. I loved the synth strings and Kate’s rich, soaring voice.
I covered “Cloudbusting” accidentally, just singing it to myself one day after spending basically a year on my own in and out of lockdown, and it took on another meaning altogether—imagining a hopeful future and reminiscing about the life I used to have. In the world we live in right now, I think a message of hope is really pertinent. And that’s what I felt when I sang the line; “the sun’s coming out.”
Listen to Katie Malco’s cover of “Cloudbusting” below.