Bust This

Kate Bush is one of those who's a household name in England, yet can only manage a cult following in this country. Her 1985 song "Cloudbusting" is an absolute classic. It's vintage Bush -- with warbly vocals, esoteric lyrics (about Wilhelm Reich) and production via the Fairlight CMI synthesizer, a staple of the phenomenal Hounds of Love album and the state-of-the-art machine of its day. And consider this: "Cloudbusting" was the last track on Side 1, which also featured "Running Up That Hill" and "Hounds of Love". What a side!

Over the years, plenty of artists have gone back and mined Kate Bush to bust clouds of their own. Take Utah Saints -- the Leeds EDM duo sampled Bush's "Cloudbusting" vocals in the appropriately titled "Something Good" from 1992 (and did it again in 2008). That track never fails to put me in an upbeat mood. More recently, the Blacksburg, VA band Wild Nothing turned out a more traditional cover version of the song.

For whatever reason, a lot of Kate Bush songs have lent themselves to very strong cover versions. Like the Futureheads version of the aforementioned "Hounds of Love", and Placebo's version of "Running Up That Hill". And last year, Das Racist's Himanshu sampled "Suspended in Gaffa" for his track "Kate Boosh".

I've been a Kate Bush fan ever since hearing her otherworldly track "The Dreaming" for the first time when I was about 11 years old. I'm just glad her music lives on as new artists discover it.