It's Raining Again

"It's Raining Again" is a song recorded by Supertramp and released as a single from their 1982 album ...Famous Last Words.... The song was written by Roger Hodgson, with lyrics about a person searching for love after breaking up with his previous lover. On the Hot 100, the song debuted at #31, becoming the highest debut for all of 1982, and peaked at #11. All of the voices on the studio version of the track were done by Roger, although in live versions on the accompanying Famous Last Words tour John Helliwell and Scott Page sang some of the harmonies on stage.

During the ending tenor saxophone solo from John Helliwell on the song, there are kids singing the old nursery rhyme "It's raining it's pouring the old man is snoring" along to the ending of the track.

The song featured on Fox Networks NASCAR coverage in the USA whenever the rain interrupts activities.

[edit] Video

The song's video, directed by future Highlander director Russell Mulcahy and conceptualised by Keith Williams, depicts a fellow who drives a beat-up convertible through a dust storm to a small town cafe to bring a bouquet to his girlfriend, who is a waitress there. A co-worker hands him a "Dear John" letter, explaining that the relationship is over. After having his parked car ticketed for heading the wrong way, he spends a forgettable night at the Pickwick Drive-In movie "Famous Last Words" (Supertramp's album), seeing himself on the film, watching another couple embrace in the car next to his at the drive-in, and meeting a small child with silver teeth, who points out that the man's car's left rear wheel is missing.

The next day the man, once again on the street outside the cafe, kisses a young girl, leaves the bouquet with her, and with his suitcase boards a Greyhound bus, southbound on I-15 toward downtown Los Angeles. One passenger plays a guitar. A disinterested passenger props his long legs onto the seat in front of him, next to a lady putting on lipstick and wearing a white wig that receives a paper airplane thrown by another passenger. Awakened by the driver at the station, the man, now the last passenger still on the bus, suddenly finds himself without anything in his pockets, presumably having been robbed by the bus passengers, but still with his suitcase. He thumbs down two rednecks in a pickup truck, who find him easy pickings for practical jokes, pitch him onto Hollywood Boulevard, and throw his suitcase onto him. After a short walk, encountering more rough people, the man then suffers a back alley beating in which he is stripped to his underwear and is robbed of his suitcase. An old lady gives him an orange umbrella just before rain begins to drench the alley. In spite of a sea of black umbrellas, he accidentally runs into his true love, who is under a white umbrella, and the two embrace and dance together in the rain. The sea of black umbrellas disappears. Surrealistically this final encounter is what had appeared and now appears at the end of the aforementioned drive-in movie.

The five members of Supertramp made brief cameo appearances in the video for the song. At the beginning, John Helliwell is a street musician playing an alto saxophone (his appearance lasts for roughly three seconds). Before the first chorus, Dougie Thomson appears as the bus driver (this was the last filmed video where Thomson would appear with his then trademark moustache and beard, as he would then be permanently clean shaven for the video of "My Kind of Lady"; his screen time was three seconds). Hodgson plays one of the passengers on the bus playing a guitar (he is in the video for the briefest time out of the band members, one second). Lastly, Rick Davies and Bob Siebenberg played the two pickup truck rednecks (their appearance lasts for close to an accumulated 10 seconds).