This is episode 6 of our My Fair Lady project, using a title or lyric from each song in the original Broadway cast album to inform or inspire a blog post.

The rain blanketing Chicagoland coincides with the next song in our project. The Rain in Spain is a celebratory song, as Higgins, Liza, and Colonel Pickering dance and sing with joy as Liza conquers the vowels of proper English. But “weather songs” can highlight a variety of moods and feelings.

Listen to the live version of REO Speedwagon’s Ridin’ the Storm Out. The opening wailing claxon takes us away to the isolation of a frightening snowstorm in Colorado. But the song isn’t about the inconvenience of being snowed in; instead, it celebrates being tied into nature — the mountains, the snow, the moon. It’s a 1970s version of getting off the grid. though admittedly, you’d best not be staying at the Overlook Hotel in those conditions!

Need a weather love song? How about one from Rod Stewart? Not the Do Ya Think I’m Sexy Rod, or the later day Great American Song Book Rod. Let’s go way back to the Every Picture Tells a Story Rod and listen to Side 2, Track 3. Yuo’ll be hearing the lovely Mandolin Wind. Rain, snow, and “the coldest winter in almost 14 years” can’t drive the song’s two lovers apart.

Probably not more than a soggy handful of songs celebrate lightening. A pair that come to mind are the 60s Lou Christie classic Lightning Strikes (followed up by more of Lou’s falsetto in the deluge of Rhapsody in the Rain) and U2’s atmospheric Electrical Storm. Unless you are a U2 fan like I am, you might have missed that last one, but you can check it out here.

Maybe you enjoy sunny songs. There are certainly plenty of those, from Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love to Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine. And don’t it feel good!

Some passing mentions for Elvis’s Kentucky Rain, The Cowsills’ The Rain, The Park and Other Things and the Carpenters’ Rainy Days and Mondays–they don’t ALWAY get me down!

My favorite weather song? It isn’t cheery and it isn’t a love song. But listening to The Doors’ Riders on the Storm sends me back to my senior year in high school, a year when so many permanent impressions were made. The lyrics are creepy (one verse IS about a mass murderer) but I was young and all of life was still ahead.

So in snow or rain or in the gloom of night…what is your favorite weather song? List one or list a bunch, and tell me why. And maybe I will see you all in on a rainy plain in Spain.

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This is episode 6 of our My Fair Lady project, using a title or lyric from each song in the original Broadway cast album to inform or inspire a blog post.

Previous Posts in the series:

My Fair Lady Project Part 1: Overture
My Fair Lady Project Part 2: Why Can’t the English
My Fair Lady Project Part 3: Wouldn’t It be Loverly
My Fair Lady Project Part 4: I’m An Ordinary Man
My Fair Lady Project Part 5: Just You Wait

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