The Same Rain Twice
Fourteen songs about rain — and the same rain more than once. You can’t step in the same river twice, Heraclitus said; but you can absolutely cry in the same rain twice. The Everly Brothers do it in 1962, and Carole King, who co-wrote it, does it again in 1983. Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” falls on Eva Cassidy and on a British rockabilly band on the same afternoon. Rain is the most-covered weather in pop, and this is a tape about the covering.
Weather, Reprised
The range is the whole point. Gene Vincent crying blue-eyed in 1960, Johnnie Ray just walking in it in 1956, Elvis caught in a Kentucky downpour looking for a girl who’s already gone, Creedence asking whether you’ve ever seen it come down on a sunny day. Then the weather drifts forward — Albert Hammond swearing it never rains in Southern California (and lying), Macy Gray reopening the Eurythmics’ umbrella, Johnny Nash watching it all finally clear. Every decade gets wet the same way and calls it something new.
It ends where the sky finally opens: Natsuko Terada’s “大阪の雨 (Osaka no Ame),” a rainstorm in five acts — the label’s own downpour, rockabilly slap-bass under a Japanese cloudburst, the weather all fourteen singers were only ever describing.
Play it front to back, preferably against a window.
Pairs well with a fogged-up window, a cold cup of tea, and a bus that isn’t coming.
