Rain
Rain is the weather of feeling at its most charged, the image Taylor reaches for when emotion breaks open or a relationship turns. Its dominant register is disappointment, a dismal turn set against an earlier brightness: the rainy ending given to a perfect day, the blue sky painted over and turned to rain. But rain is rarely only sorrow in her writing. It carries the heightened romance of the kiss in the pouring rain, the cleansing relief of finally breathing once the rain comes down, the sense of something inevitable that falls whether the beloved is present or gone, and the sensory memory of how a street looks and smells once it has just rained. Set apart from the broader weather register of storms, snow, wind and drought, rain is the single condition she returns to most and bends to the widest range of feeling.
Rain carries the charge of feeling that cannot be held back, grief or longing or release that arrives like weather, beyond the speaker's choosing. Where it falls against a remembered brightness it marks loss; where she turns up into it, it washes something clean. Its recurring promise is that the rain will come regardless, and that what counts is who is standing in it beside her.
Appears in 33 songs
“The rain came pouring down When I was drownin', that's when I could finally breathe”
Rain operates as both tears/sadness and refreshment/new life, the cleansing force that allows the speaker to finally breathe and emerge from the addictive relationship. Uncle Jerry identifies rain as holding dual symbolic meanings simultaneously.
“Oh, what a shame, what a rainy ending Given to a perfect day”
Rain as metaphor for the dismal end of what should have been a good relationship, the sudden shift from hope to despair.
“She waits and takes her time 'cause little Miss Sunshine always thinks it's gonna rain”
“Now he'll be her shelter when it rains”
“The way you move is like a full-on rainstorm”
“Drop everything now, meet me in the pouring rain”
“Glistening grass from September rain”
“The voices in his head called the rain to end our days of wild”
“How you don't miss me in the shower and remember how my rain-soaked body was shaking”
“And when that sky rains fire on you and you're persona non grata”
“I've been left in the rain, lost and pining”
“It's like we don't remember the rain we thought would last forever and ever”
“All of me changed like midnight rain”
“Rain soaking, blind hoping, you said I was freeloading”
“Once the last drop of rain has dried off the pavement”
“It wasn't just like a movie, the rain didn't soak through my clothes down to my skin”
“But the rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me”
“But now my eyes leak acid rain on the pillow where you used to lay your head”
“We bless the rains on Cornelia Street, memorize the creaks in the floor”
“Show me a gray sky, a rainy cab ride”
“And when we had that fight out in the rain, you ran after me and called my name”
“So why'd you have to rain on my parade?”
“Stand there like a ghost, shaking from the rain”
“All I know is pouring rain and everything has changed”
“You paint me a blue sky, and go back and turn it to rain”
“I do recall now the smell of the rain fresh off the pavement”
“Just know I'm right here hoping that you'll come in with the rain”
“Wait there in the pouring rain, come back for more”
“There's something 'bout the way the street looks when it's just rained”
“Can't help it if I wanna kiss you in the rain”
“But I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain”
“And it rains in your bedroom, everything is wrong, it rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone”
“Trying to see through the rain coming down”
“But he leaves you out like a penny in the rain”
“I'm taking pictures in my mind so I can save them for a rainy day”