The 3rd track from Smith’s debut album Horses (1975).

In her lyric collection Complete, Smith writes

“Birdland” was inspired by a passage from Peter Reich’s Book of Dreams. His father Wilhelm Reich had died, and during a family gathering, he thought he saw the lights of a spaceship while the song ‘Party Doll’ was blaring. He believed his father to be at the helm. But depite his desperate cries, the light vanished into the night sky as Peter lay on the grass, weeping beneath the stars.

The hit song “Cloudbusting”, from Kate Bush’s 1985 album Hounds of Love, was also inspired by the same book.