This song is about nuclear holocaust seen from a fetus' perspective. He is still inside the mother's womb and he knows the bomb has exploded and he is going to die because he cannot help breathing in the radioactive air through his mother. We witness helplessly as he and the rest of mankind run out of air and die.
Kate Bush (from Keyboard July 1985): "'Breathing' is about human beings killing themselves. I think that people smoking is one of those tiny things that says a lot about human beings. I mean, I smoke and enjoy it, but we smoke and we know it's dangerous. Maybe there's some kind of strange subconscious desire to damage ourselves. It would seem so if you looked back through history, wouldn't it?"
Never For Ever, Bush's third studio album, marked a number of firsts for the British singer-songwriter. She became the first British female solo artist with a #1 album in the UK and the first female solo artist to enter the chart at #1. It was also her first time producing an album (along with her engineer Jon Kelly).
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