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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 July 5, 1980 it spent 10 weeks in the UK chart, peaking at number five. 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 writes to her husband in the guise of a young, seductive woman -- something which she fears is the opposite of how her husband currently sees her (Hence the barbed lines: "Just like his wife before she freezed on him Just like his wife when she was beautiful..."). The trap is set when, in her bitterness and paranoia, 'Babooshka' arranges to meet with her husband, thereby snaring him in his own treachery -- without, it seems, the slightest pangs of conscience regarding her own involvement in the entrapment. From Bush's mime in the video, one might assume that, if her husband appears at the rendez-vous point, she will be waiting to kill him for his ironic infidelity. The mood of the song is one of barely controlled feminine rage, blooming into screams at the chorus, and melded with the title character's own regrets and self-loathing. The music video depicts Bush beside a double bass (a.k.a contrabass), wearing a black bodysuit and a veil in her role as the embittered wife, changing into an extravagant, mythlike and rather sparse 'Russian' costume as her alter-ego, Babooshka. (The wide-eyed mania of that character might lead one to make comparisons with the Greek Erinyes or any range of mythic warrior women, such as the emasculating Amazons or the Valkyries of Norse myth). 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. The B-side contains her song "Ran-Tan Waltz".
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