Kate Bush- Breathing (live at the Comic Relief Benefit 1986)
You know why Kate Bush is awesome? Because she can make a song sung from the perspective of a fetus in the womb shortly after a nuclear holocaust genuinely moving and not ludicrous. I don’t know why she’s so reticent to perform live (she’s only done 4 live appearances since 1980, and two of those were just guest appearances at Peter Gabriel and David Gilmour concerts) since she does a stunning job here, especially at the “oh quick, breathe in deep!” part at 2:33 where all of the gravity and hopelessness of the song shows in her facial expressions. Kate is a performer who is both praised and derided for the theatricality inherent in most of her songs, but this performance proves that her work stands up to (and is possibly improved by) being stripped down and presented in its barest form.
