Babooshka

"Babooshka" is about futile situations and how we often ruin things for ourselves. In the song, a man is tested by his wife when she starts sending him anonymous scented letters. Seeing his reaction, she takes it further by arranging a meeting with her in disguise. Not knowing it is her, he is reminded of his wife when she was younger and more amorous.

The word "Babooshka" is Russian for grandmother. It's also the name of a type of headdress. The title was chosen through a series of coincidences: Kate turned on the TV and someone was singing about Babooshka; looking through a magazine she came across an opera titled Babooshka, and a friend had a cat named Babooshka. Kate has always been fascinated by the concept of synchronicity, which inspired her earlier track "Strange Phenomena."

Peter Gabriel was the first UK owner of a Fairlight Series I digital synthesizer, the Rolls-Royce of early samplers. He introduced Kate Bush to the newly available instrument when she sang backing vocals for him on "No Self Control" and "Games Without Frontiers". Among other things, Gabriel used the sampler to capture the sound of breaking glass – a trick Bush repeated on this song. By the time of Bush's albums The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, the Fairlight CMI synthesizer had become her primary writing tool.