Cloudbusting

I consider myself privileged to have been alive when the Michael J Fox Sci Fi Romantic Comedy Back to the Future appeared in cinemas. I was about ten years old when I went to see it with my cousin while visiting him in London during the holiday, and I vividly remember the excitement and awe of watching that film.

I also remember the video* for 'Cloudbusting' by Kate Bush which was shown at the beginning:

At the time, I couldn't quite understand why they showed the whole thing - this was a cinema showing films, not Top of the Pops! I just wanted to get on with watching the movie.

Having said that, I did have some appreciation for the steampunk cloudbusting contraption (not that I had any idea what steampunk was back then), as well as the story involving mysterious men in black coming to kidnap the mad professor-type dad (kinda fitting for the film that followed, I guess).

All this was, however, wasted on my impatient youth. It wasn't until I'd grown up that I came to appreciate the song for what it was. It's one of my favourite Kate Bush songs - Bush's haunting voice and the rousing orchestration make it one of those anthemic, epic songs that is timeless.

So even though, at the time, I was frustrated by having to sit through seven minutes of warbling, the marketing pulled off. The seed had been sown, and over time I grew to love a song that once I had resented.

Who would ever employ a marketing strategy like that these days? No-one, because nobody is prepared to wait that long anymore.

*points of interest: the father was played by Donald Sutherland and the song is based on the true of story of some fruitcake psychoanalyst who believed in a cosmic energy called Orgone