Story of the song: Army Dreamers by Kate Bush

From The Independent archive: Robert Webb on the pop star’s sombre take on military death

Bush signs copies of her album ‘Never For Ever’ at Virgin Megastore, London, in 1980 (Getty)

A little like “Sons Of”, Jacques Brel’s morbid tale of boys going to war and not returning, the equally sombre “Army Dreamers” is about the senseless death of a soldier on manoeuvres. Kate Bush assumes the role of a grieving mother who, through the waste of her son’s life, questions her very motherhood: could she have prevented his death by buying him a guitar or giving him a “proper education”?

“I find it fascinating about mothers that there’s a kind of maternal passion which is there all the time, even when they’re talking about cheese sandwiches,” said Bush of the song.

It has a chilling second verse: “Mourning in the aerodrome / The weather warmer, he is colder / Four men in uniform / To carry home my little soldier.”

Although the lyrics hint at the Troubles, she denied that the song was directed at Northern Ireland. In fact, she intended it more as a comment on British forces posted in Germany. “I’m not slagging off the army,” Bush said. “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 what they want.”

Bush wrote the song in the studio, fitting her story around a rather unmilitary two-step. A waltz was chosen to emphasise the traditional subject matter. It was recorded in 1980 at Abbey Road for her third album Never For Ever, co-produced by Bush and Jon Kelly. For the video, she dressed in khaki, blinking in time to the click of a rifle reloading. It was her least successful single.