Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

Being from Manchester—the Rainy City—I know a thing or two about the rain.

But not exciting, evocative rain.

We don’t have hot, romantic deluges in Manchester.

It isn’t the sort of rain you’d ever dance or fall in love in.

We don’t have thunder or lightning or any of that cataclysmic celestial drama.

We don’t have the sort of rain that makes music on the rooftops or pours like liquid mercury through the trees.

We have a sort of weak, perennial drizzle.

As far as I’m aware, it pretty much never stops.

We had a brief heatwave back in 2021, which coincided perfectly with a set of emergency laws that forbade us from going outside.

Since then, it’s just been raining.

I’m sort of amazed that anyone chooses to live here.

Especially me.

It’s like I’m suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

I’m so numb to the rain now that whenever I see the sun, I’m filled with a helpless sort of joy.

It’s like a brief respite from the most mundane form of water torture I can think of.

Manchester, for those who might not know, sits in the rain shadow of the Pennine Hills—a sort of topological spine that runs down the center of the county.

Heavy, saturated air comes east from the Atlantic and, meeting the Pennines, begins to rise, purging itself all over Manchester before carrying on innocently, as if nothing had ever happened, into Yorkshire.

Anyway—here are my top five songs about the rain.

If you think I’m missing any, let me know:

1. A Rainy Night in Soho - The Pogues

Having already discussed this song with you a fair bit following the death of Shane MacGowan last year, I won’t dwell too long.

MacGowan, like all the best writers, uses a personal moment—two lovers taking ‘shelter from a shower’—to explore the past, the future, life, and death, all within about four and a half minutes, punctuated by an unforgettable motif shared across strings, pipes, and saxophones.

A masterpiece.

2. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall - Bob Dylan

As is typical of Dylan’s early work, the essential structure is borrowed from an old English folk song called ‘Lord Randall,’ in which an evil stepmother poisons her Lord’s heir (and, unforgivably, his dog).

Dylan opens each verse with the question: ‘Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?’

Each response is heavy with mystical imagery: apocalyptic poetry about ‘black forests’ and ‘dead oceans,’ where ‘souls are forgotten’ amidst the ‘roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.’

Written at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it’s an almost transcendental vision of nuclear death and destruction.

3. Why Does It Always Rain on Me? - Travis

I think Travis are a criminally underrated band. The older I get, the better their music sounds.

They sort of fell between the cracks of Britpop and the indie revival of the mid-noughties and often get forgotten about.

The songwriting is unquestionable, and ‘Why Does It Always Rain on Me?’ is probably my favorite.

I’m not sure there’s anything deeply profound about it beyond the obvious metaphor; it’s just a great line to hang a tune around.

It’s got everything you want in a pop song—a beautiful melody, a verse and chorus that swings tastefully from minor to major, and a pervasive sense of gentle melancholy.

4. In the Early Morning Rain - Gordon Lightfoot

One of the all-time great Canadian songwriters. Gordon Lightfoot writes melodies that are so timeless they come to feel like old friends.

And there’s something baptismal about the early morning rain—especially if you haven’t been to sleep.

In this tune, the speaker sits cold and drunk by an airport runway, watching the planes take off, in a state of weary stasis.

It’s a great example of how grounding a lyric in a sense of time and place allows you to explore ideas that move way beyond it, without them becoming too generic and untethered.

5. Rainy Night in Georgia - Brook Benton

This song is so good that there are three different versions of it that I love: by Ray Charles, Randy Crawford, and the original, by Brook Benton.

It’s classic, cinematic American songwriting.

‘A rainy night in Georgia / It seems like it’s raining all over the world.’

I’ve always been envious of the way that the geography of America is so instantly evocative.

By the end of the first chorus, you can smell the damp pinewood, the soaking suitcase, the hot summer rain.

What have I got to work with?

‘It’s spitting again in Wythenshawe’?

Let me know what I’m forgetting, and enjoy the sunshine when it comes.

Until then:

Keep dreaming,

Rob