It's Raining Again

"It's Raining Again"
Single by Supertramp
from the album …Famous Last Words…
B-side "Bonnie"
Released October 1982 (1982-10)
Format 7" vinyl
Genre Pop rock, jazz rock, art rock, soft rock
Length 4:24
Label A&M
Writer(s) Rick Davies, Roger Hodgson
Producer(s) Supertramp, Peter Henderson
Certification Gold (CRIA)[1]
Supertramp singles chronology
"Breakfast in America (live)"
(1981)		 "It's Raining Again"
(1982)		 "My Kind of Lady"
(1983)

"It's Raining Again" is a song recorded by British progressive rock band Supertramp and released as a single from their 1982 album …Famous Last Words… with credits given to Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, although as indicated on the album sleeve, it is a Hodgson composition.[Note 1] The end of the song incorporates the old nursery rhyme "It's Raining, It's Pouring".

All of the voices on the studio version of the track are Hodgson's. In live versions on the accompanying Famous Last Words tour, John Helliwell and Scott Page sang the lower harmonies on stage while Hodgson sang higher parts. For the most part, the song is upbeat. It contains a brief melodica solo by Rick Davies, originally thought to be by John Helliwell until proved incorrect by a French radio interview.

Music video

The song's video was directed by future Highlander director Russell Mulcahy and conceptualized by Keith Williams.

In the video, a man 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. 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" (reminding viewers about Supertramp's album), seeing himself on the film, watching another couple embrace in the car next to his, and meeting a small child with silver teeth, who points out that his car's left rear wheel is missing.

The next day the man, now on the street outside the cafe without his car, kisses the young girl, leaves the bouquet with her, and with his suitcase boards a bus to downtown Los Angeles. An uninterested 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, finds himself without anything in his pockets, presumably having been robbed, 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 suffers a back alley beating in which he is stripped to his underwear and 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. This final encounter is what had appeared and now appears at the end of the aforementioned drive-in movie. As the camera pulls back you see the couple on the convertible now with two children in the back seat while the song fades out with the children's nursery rhyme "it's raining, it's pouring..."

The five members of Supertramp make cameo appearances in the video. At the beginning, John Helliwell is a street musician playing an alto saxophone. 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). Hodgson plays a guitar-playing bus passenger. Lastly, Rick Davies and Bob Siebenberg play the two pickup truck rednecks.

Track listings

7" vinyl

Side one
No. Title Length
1. "It's Raining Again"   4:25
Side two
No. Title Length
1. "Bonnie"   5:37

Chart performance

The song debuted at No. 31 on 30 October 1982 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the highest debut on that chart for all of 1982, and peaked at No. 11. The record was a big success on the European charts, reaching the top 10 in Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland.

Chart (1982) Peak
position
UK Singles Chart[2] 26
Austrian Singles Chart[3] 7
Canadian RPM Singles Chart[4] 4
Dutch GfK Charts[5] 6
Dutch Top 40[6] 6
German Singles Chart[7] 3
Irish Singles Chart[8] 16
Norwegian Singles Chart[9] 6
Swiss Singles Chart[10] 2
US Billboard Hot 100[11] 11
US Billboard Adult Contemporary[11] 5
US Billboard Mainstream Rock[11] 7

Personnel

Use in popular culture

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

Notes

  1. ↑ Like John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles, Hodgson and Davies joined writer's credits from 1974 until 1983, when Hodgson left the band to pursue a solo career.

References

External links

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