FEATURE:
Now He’s Sitting in His Hole
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of the Army Dreamers music video in 1980
Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers at Forty-Five
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AHEAD of the…
forty-fifth anniversary of Never for Ever on 8th September, there are a few features I want to put out. Kate Bush’s third studio album is among her best yet remains underrated. On 22nd September, the album’s third and final single turns forty-five. Army Dreamers reached sixteen in the U.K. In 2024, Army Dreamers gained new attention through TikTok increasing its popularity among younger generations. The surge in interest saw a 1,300% increase in streams. That song being used to score so many short videos. I have written about Army Dreamers a lot, so I will try not to repeat too much of what has come before. However, as the song is almost forty-five, I do want to start off with some valuable interview archive. Kate Bush talking about this song. At this point in her career, many were associating her with a particular imagine and sound. Nothing seen as political or serious. Breathing, the first single from Never for Ever, was a definite reaction to her. Now in her early-twenties, being influenced more by subjects around warfare and the nuclear threat. Army Dreamers is Bush talking about the insanity ands futility of war. Where it takes young lives for no reason:
“It’s the first song I’ve ever written in the studio. It’s not specifically about Ireland, it’s just putting the case of a mother in these circumstances, how incredibly sad it is for her. How she feels she should have been able to prevent it. If she’d bought him a guitar when he asked for one.
Colin Irwin, ‘Paranoia And Passion Of The Kate Inside’. Melody Maker (UK), 10 October 1980
The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn’t matter how he died, but he didn’t die in action – it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who’s obviously got a lot of work to do. She’s full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream.
Week-long diary, Flexipop, 1980
No, it’s not personal. It’s just a mother grieving and observing the waste. A boy with no O-levels, say, who might have [??? Line missing!] whatever. But he’s nothing to do, no way to express himself. So he joins the army. He’s trapped. So many die, often in accidents. I’m not slagging off the army, because it’s good for certain people. But there are a lot of people in it who shouldn’t be.
Derek Jewell, ‘How To Write Songs And Influence People’. Sunday Times (UK), 5 October 1980”.
There are a couple of features that I want to get to that provide more insight and depth. I am moving to Kris Needs's first ZigZag interview from 1980. I am not sure of the exact date, but it must have been after Never for Ever went to number one in the U.K. Right near the end of 1980. It is a good interview and has some useful observations and information. There is a part about Army Dreamers in it. Kate Bush did a lot of promotion in 1980, and each interview provides something different:
“It'd be good if people could see that you're doing stuff that's pretty new, too. You could never mistake Kate Bush for anyone else.
"Oh, great. I'd like to think that, but it's not for me to say. When you first come out, people say you're the new thing. then when you've been around for two or three years you become old hat, and they want to sweep you under the carpet as being MOR, which I don't feel I am from the artistic point of view. It doesn't feel like MOR to me at all, although I wouldn't call it Punk! Sometimes it's not even rock...I don't know, I think it's wrong to put labels on music. Even Punk, that's really just a label for convenience--it covers so many areas. I think sometimes it can actually kill people, being put under labels. I think it's something that shouldn't be encouraged. If people could just accept music as music and people as people, without having to compare them to other things...which is something we instinctively try to do."
The way you're presented in the press could alienate some people, I s'pose.
"Don't you think any form of publicity alienates the person who is not involved in it? I think that's part of the whole process. That's why I feel that the good thing about albums and gigs and even radio is that you are directly communicating with your audience, but with papers and appearances on TV you're not really relating directly."
Does the bad criticism hurt you?
"No, I don't get hurt. I've read a few reviews of the album, an some of them really couldn't stand me, probably much more than the album. In fact, one guy didn't like me so much, he had to write four columns of 'I can't stand Bush!' That's cool. Sometimes I find it funny. I think a bad review is a good omen in some papers."
At least that's a positive reaction.
"Yeah, if they really hate you, it's just as good as really liking you. You're really getting under their skin so much that they've got to speak about it. That's great!"
And the album still came in at number one.
"I can't believe it, still. Every time I tell someone I feel like I'm lying. I couldn't have asked more for such an important step in what I'm doing, because I feel that this album is a new step for me. The other two albums are so far away that they're not true. They really aren't me anymore. I think this is something the public could try and open up about. When you stereotype artists you always expect a certain kind of sound.
"I'd really like to be able to leave myself open to any form of music, so if I wanted to, I could do funk tracks on the next album, I could do classical, I could do bossa novas. I think it's best to stay as open as you can. As a person I'm changing all the time, and the first album is very much like a diary of me at that time--I was into a very high range. The same with the second album, and I feel this is perhaps why this one is like starting again. It's like the first album on a new level. It's much more under control."
You took a long time doing it. [You think that one took a long time!]
"Yeah, it did. It took a lot of work, but it was very beautiful work because it's so involving and it's so like emotions. It's totally unpredictable and you can fall in love with it or you can hate it or if you want to you can ignore it: you know, all the things that you can do with people."
That's one of the main things I like about the music--the emotions running around.
"I think everyone is emotional, and I think a lot of people are afraid of being so. They feel that it's vulnerable. Myself, I feel that it's the key to everything, and that the more you can find out about your emotions the better. Some of the things that come into your head can be a surprise when you're thinking."
The next single is Army Dreamers, which sounds like a wistful little waltz-time ditty on first hearing, though a bit sombre. Kate adopts a lilting Irish accent--all very nice. But listen to the words and she's mourning her dead son, killed in the army. I thought Kate was singing about Northern Ireland, but not necessarily...
"It's not actually directed at Ireland. It's included, but it's much more embracing the whole European thing. That's why it says BFPO in the first chorus, to try and broaden it away from Ireland."
What about the Irish accent?
"The Irish accent was important because the treatment of the song is very traditional, and the Irish would always use their songs to tell stories, it's the traditional way. There's something about an Irish accent that's very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an Irish accent it comes across in a different way. But the song was meant to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in manoeuvres, not even in action. It doesn't get brought out much, but it happens a lot. I'm not slagging off the Army, it's just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers, and it's not really what they want. That's what frightens me”.
I will finish off with my personal thoughts about the song. Why it is so important. First, Dreams of Orgonon published a deep and detailed feature about Army Dreamers. Some interesting analysis and fascinating thoughts. I have selected a few sections. Hopefully providing additional texture. Army Dreamers is one of Kate Bush’s finest songs. One that is so relevant to this day:
“Since we’re used to Bush being asleep to political infrastructure and class, we can at least turn to her complex politics of domesticity. While she doesn’t interrogate the structural causes of political violence, she’s still centering a song around the vulnerable people whose lives are destroyed by it. Never for Ever is populated by mothers and wives. Five of its eleven songs explicitly focus on maternal and uxorial figures, and that’s if we don’t count the broadly familial “All We Ever Look For.” Bush’s wives and mothers tend towards fatigue over their familial roles, experiencing emotions that contradict their outward actions or social operations. Bush’s mothers are an intrinsic good whose absence or loss is a tragedy, and whose losses are a social catastrophe. Key to the mother’s characterization in “Army Dreamers” is absence. She bemoans not merely her lost son, but his lost opportunities and the things she couldn’t provide for him. “What a waste of army dreamers,” muses Bush, in a ritual mourning of military casualties, which treats them as a cessation of dreams.
Most impressive is the way “Army Dreamers” treats the mother as an individual while also stressing her importance to her family. Stripped of her duties to her son, she is left with no more motherhood to perform. This suggests that while war is horrible, the people who are left behind have their own experiences of it. Men get sent off to die, and the women they leave behind are expected to grieve dutifully. Yet they’re prescribed a performative kind of grief — the actual effects of trauma are widely besmirched and ignored by the jingoistic reactionaries who send civilians off to die. Women are usually seen as broken when their soldiers fail to come home — this isn’t quite what Bush does. Is the mother broken? No, of course not. Has she had a vital part of her life snatched from her? Utterly.
There’s a touch of sentimentalism to this, if at least a grounded and humanitarian one. Violent deaths are often devastating because they cut short the lives of unsuspecting civilians who’ve been planning to go live their lives as usual the next day. Bush’s anti-militarism is hardly strident, but “Army Dreamers” has an edge to it even in its understatedness, blaming the services of “B.F.P.O” for overseas tragedies (although interestingly, her son’s death appears to be an accident — there’s little fanfare of death, no suggestion of the glory of battle). The horror of the death is largely its silence — all the things that couldn’t happen, no matter how much saying them would make them so.
The politics of the situation are left understated, as is typical for Bush, and yet with a light inimical rage, as if Bush is finally turning to the British establishment and shouting “look at what you’ve done!” While “Army Dreamers” is far from an indictment of the military-industrial complex (indeed, it has more to do with the British Army’s consumption of Irish civilians than anything else), its highlighting of war as futile is striking. “Give the kid the pick of pips/and give him all your stripes and ribbons/now he’s sitting in his hole/he might as well have buttons and bows” is a line of understated condemnation that spits on military emblems (pips are a British Army insignia) and consolidates trenches and graves. “B. F. P. O.,,” intone Bush’s backing vocalists again and again. In interviews, Bush backpedals from any perceived anti-militarist sentiments in her work (“I’m not slagging off the army…”), but her song tells a different story: nothing comes with B. F. P. O. except carnage.
In the song’s music video, Bush’s final collaboration with director Keef MacMillan (the two strong-willed auteurs could only collaborate together for so long), the visceral glimpses of departed loved ones that plague mourners gets captured in one devastatingly simple moment. Bush, a soldier stationed in a forest and surrounded by men in camo, turns to a tree to see her lost son. She runs to embrace him, and he’s gone before she reaches the tree. There’s a hard cut to Bush’s eyes flashing wide open. There it is: trauma and grief in a glance. Waking up, but still living the same dream.
Recorded in spring of 1980 at Abbey Road. Released with Never for Ever on 7 September 1980; issued as a single on 22 September 1980. Performed for television numerous times, including on programs in Germany and the Netherlands. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, production. Stuart Elliott — bodhrán. Brian Bath — acoustic guitar, backing vocals. Paddy Bush — mandolin, backing vocals. Alan Murphy — electric guitar, acoustic bass guitar, backing vocals. Duncan Mackay — Fairlight CMI. Jon Kelly — production, engineering. Photo: BTS picture from music video (cred. John Carder Bush)”.
I have brought in some information and resources that I featured in previous features. One as recently as last year. However, back in June, Kate Bush News reported how Army Dreamers was in with a shot at overtaking Wuthering Heights (from 1978’s The Kick Inside, this was her debut single) on Spotify. As I type this (11th August), Army Dreamers is less than a million streams shy of overtaking Wuthering Heights. Its video has thirty millions views on YouTube:
“We’ve certainly been keeping an eye on streaming and digital services since Kate’s global smash hit with Running Up that Hill in 2022. And later this Summer something quite unexpected is likely to take place on the world’s biggest music streaming platform, Spotify. While none of Kate’s songs are now ever likely to overtake Running Up That Hill as her most streamed track, if daily streams continue as they currently are, Army Dreamers will supplant Kate’s signature hit single, Wuthering Heights, on the 15th August as her second most-streamed song on Spotify. We project it to reach in excess of 230 million streams in or around that date.
This milestone is significant for a couple of reasons. Firstly, of all of Kate’s well-known hits, even just a few years ago it would have been expected that only Cloudbusting, This Woman’s Work, Babooshka, The Man With The Child In His Eyes or Hounds of Love would be among the songs that could possibly challenge Wuthering Heights in global popularity, even on streaming services which traditionally skew to a younger demographic. Army Dreamers, while well-loved, never seemed to have the same traction as those huge hit songs.
Secondly, as we reported last year, Army Dreamers has captured the imagination of young people the world over and has become a viral sensation on TikTok and Instagram, with that demographic latching on to the beautiful sentiments in the song as they grapple with at least two dreadful major world conflicts happening on the news in Ukraine and Gaza. Kate is not unknown in the wider world anymore (thank you, Stranger Things) and here she is spelling out the futility of war in perhaps the most effecting way possible, through this achingly timeless song.
The Army Dreamers phenomenon has not, we imagine, been lost on Kate herself. We have reported in March that Kate has helped raise over £500,000 for the charity War Child in just the last year alone, with the release of her animated film Little Shrew, and the money raised from her signed Soundwaves art prints and Boxes of Lost at Sea vinyl presentations. And, if you visit Kate’s official Fish People website landing page today, you will notice that the Army Dreamers music video is presented in all its glory (in a good quality Vimeo stream) for fans old and new to enjoy. We’re also very fond of the “Mrs Mop” performance above that Kate did on Rock Pop in Germany in 1980, along with Paddy Bush, Del Palmer and Andy Bryant as her performing soldier pals”.
There is new and continued relevance when we think of Army Dreamers. Apart from the war that is happening in Ukraine and the destruction and violence from Russia, there is also genocide in Palestine. The young soldiers that are being killed in the Ukraine-Russia conflict means Army Dreamers’ lyrics are as powerful and important now as they were in 1980. It is the murder of children in Palestine that I feel also gives Army Dreamers gravitas. Not young soldiers being killed and their lives being cut short. We can see the victims of genocide. Those being wiped out. By the time this feature is shared – in less than a month -, I think Army Dreamers would have overtake Wuthering Heights on Spotify as Kate Bush’s second-most-popular song. Maybe it is the timeliness of it. How it is relevant to what is happening in the world now. It is a magnificent song that I also hope shines a light on Army Dreamers. The album turns forty-five on 8th September, so I hope that there is a lot more written about it. Still under-discussed and not seen as one of Bush’s best albums. MOJO ranked Kate Bush’s fifty best songs last July. They placed Army Dreamers eleventh (“The third and final single to be lifted from Never For Ever delivered a sucker-punch in a gossamer glove. A haunting waltz, built around double bass, gentle stabs of cello, sampled pistol-cocks and a spectral mandolin figure, its message was an unsettling mix of the motherly and political: that working-class boy soldiers join up, and die, because other more glamorous occupations aren’t open to them. Delivered in Bush’s best wide-eyed whisper, it matches Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding for its profoundly humanist reading of the everyman’s tug of war and pride”).
When ranking her twenty-nine singles in 2018, The Guardian placed Army Dreamers sixth (“Subtly affecting, promoted with a supremely bizarre performance on German TV – involving a rubber-glove-sporting Bush sweeping the stage while dressed as a cleaner – Army Dreamers demonstrates the influence of folk music on her work. Its anti-war message is straightforward, but its eerie mood gets under your skin and into your bones like cold weather”). I will leave things there. The third single from Never for Ever, Army Dreamers turns forty-five on 22nd September. One of her most important affecting songs to that point, its lyrics might seem only relevant to 1980 and the violence then. The Iran-Iraq War started in September 1980. In 1979, there was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ongoing Troubles in Northern Ireland. Kate Bush undoubtably affected by images of young soldiers losing their lives. Some of Army Dreamers’ lyrics strike hard: “But he didn't have the money for a guitar/(What could he do?)/(Should have been a politician)/But he never had a proper education/(What could he do?)/(Should have been a father)/But he never/even made it to his twenties/What a waste/Army dreamers/Oh, what a waste of/Army (army) dreamers (dreamers)”. Forty-five years after it was released, this incredibly potent and moving song has connected with a new generation of artists and fans alike. It has found life on TikTok and it is understandable why many can relate to the song in 2025. Someone who wrote a masterpiece that moved people in 1980 and continues to forty-five years later, it is just shows what a…
REMARKABLE artist Kate Bush is.