Dear listeners,
It’s lastly April, which suggests it’s time for these proverbial showers. We’re enduring one other dreary, drizzly week of grey skies right here in New York, however I’ve discovered a silver lining in all of the clouds. Rather than rage towards the rain, I’ve determined to make it my muse for at this time’s playlist.
Perhaps as a result of enduring a drizzly day is such a common expertise, well-liked music is stuffed with rain songs. Some (like a observe right here from the soul trio Love Unlimited) have fun it, however most (the Carpenters, Ann Peebles) bemoan it, or at the least see it as a metaphor for every kind of unhappiness. So get able to wallow — however know that this playlist ends on an optimistic word.
Plus, if all these rain songs get you down, simply know that there’s an inevitably floral sequel to this playlist coming in May.
Listen alongside whilst you learn.
1. Neil Young: “See the Sky About to Rain”
You know I needed to embrace some Neil Young now that he’s again on Spotify. Clouds collect ominously on this moody tune from his nice, uncompromising 1974 album “On the Beach,” which options understated percussion from Levon Helm and foreshadows the downpour to come back on the album’s melancholic second aspect.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Ann Peebles: “I Can’t Stand the Rain”
The instrument that makes that iconic, pinging rain sound in the beginning of this 1973 basic? That could be an electrical timbale, which the producer Willie Mitchell had just lately acquired and was excited to experiment with on this revolutionary observe. Luckily, Ann Peebles and her songwriter associate Don Bryant gave Mitchell the right showcase for that futuristic percussion sound: a soulful lament in regards to the climate, destined to be sampled and launched to an entire new technology by Missy Elliott in her 1997 debut single.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Waylon Jennings: “Rainy Day Woman”
The solely tune on the nation outlaw’s hit 1974 album “The Ramblin’ Man” that he wrote himself, “Rainy Day Woman” is an ode to a pessimistic, Debbie Downer sort, although it appears that evidently Waylon Jennings likes her that approach. As he places it in his low, rough-hewed croon, “I know where to go on a cloudy day.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. The Beatles: “Rain”
Recorded through the “Revolver” periods, this dreamy 1966 B-side to “Paperback Writer” by no means made it onto a correct album, however it stays a potent early instance of the Beatles’ penchant for studio experimentation and curiosity within the burgeoning sounds of psychedelia. As Ringo Starr put it in 1984, talking of his ingenious strategy to percussion on the observe, “‘Rain’ blows me away. It’s out of left field. I know me and I know my playing, and then there’s ‘Rain.’”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. The Carpenters: “Rainy Days and Mondays”
A timeless soundtrack for languidly gazing out the window on a drizzly day, this 1971 hit, with lyrics by Paul Williams, was recorded when the precocious Karen Carpenter was simply 20. “What I’ve got, they used to call the blues,” Carpenter sings in her clarion voice, parting the clouds with the luminosity of her tone.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. FKA twigs: “Water Me”
Though not a tune about precipitation within the literal sense, this aqueous, atmospheric and underrated 2013 observe from FKA twigs’s second EP is a private favourite, and I occur to suppose it completely captures the vibe of a wet day.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Love Unlimited: “Walking in the Rain With the One I Love”
Finally, right here’s a tune that celebrates the rain, written by Barry White for Love Unlimited, the all-female trio that sang backup vocals for his solo recordings. This 1972 hit options drizzly sound results, lush harmonies and a sensual spoken-word intro that revels within the romance of a sudden downpour: “Oh, it feels so good,” intones Glodean James, who would marry White and take his final identify two years later. “The rain — and thinking of you.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“7 Songs for April Showers” observe checklist
Track 1: Neil Young, “See the Sky About to Rain”
Track 2: Ann Peebles, “I Can’t Stand the Rain”
Track 3: Waylon Jennings, “Rainy Day Woman”
Track 4: The Beatles, “Rain”
Track 5: The Carpenters, “Rainy Days and Mondays”
Track 6: FKA twigs, “Water Me”
Track 7: Love Unlimited, “Walking in the Rain with the One I Love”
Bonus Tracks
If you’re nonetheless mulling over Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” — as you ought to be, because it’s 27 tracks lengthy — I like to recommend Jon Pareles’s overview, which articulated fairly a number of of my very own emotions in regards to the album. I additionally had the pleasure of taking part in a critics’ spherical desk about “Cowboy Carter” with my colleagues Wesley Morris, Ben Sisario and Salamishah Tillet, which you’ll be able to learn right here. In the phrases of Cowboy Carter herself, “It’s a lot of talkin’ going on.”
Also, I totally loved Brett Martin’s profile of the wildly prolific novelty songwriter Matt Farley on this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. While I can not in good conscience suggest any of Farley’s music on this publication, I have to confess that I’ve listened to multiple tune launched by one in all his extra ridiculous monikers, the Toilet Bowl Cleaners.
