“Red Rain” – Peter Gabriel
(Words/music: Peter Gabriel, available on So, Geffen 1986)

Generally, pop music uses rain as a setting rather than as a force of nature.  In these songs, rain is an impediment to the day’s activities or an obstacle to overcome.  It’s something to stand in, travel through, or keep us indoors.  When it steps out of the background, rain often serves as a cleansing agent – something to wash over us - or as a manifestation of the doldrums.  The Jesus and Mary Chain (and later Garbage) even equated rain with happiness, or at least happiness buried within a bittersweet memory.  Rarely is rain the thing causing floods, erosion, or other types of destruction.  When it is, it’s not called by its name – it’s a storm, or a hurricane/tsunami, but rarely rain.  Thus, when “rain” pops up in a song title, most of the time it’s the source of a slight bummer or occasionally a setting for some grand romantic statement or introspection.

Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” sounds like the exception to this generalization.  From the opening moments of the song, something sounds unsettling.  In between declarations of being surrounded by this red rain, Gabriel details a series of dreams where he helplessly witnesses someone (the “you” in the song) suffering.  He keeps returning to the sea yet still can’t remedy the situation.  It’s either a series of reoccurring dreams – where Gabriel’s narrator keeps coming up short no matter how much he hurries or whatever he tries to do – or a prolonged torture outside of his control.  Gabriel sounds anguished as he sings – not overtly tortured as if he experienced the pain himself, but rather helpless and frustrated by his dreams.  He chooses to use rain as the manifestation of this suffering, but it feels like he’s drowning in guilt.  Perhaps it’s guilt for being helpless in dreamland, or perhaps the guilt prompted the dreams.  Regardless, the choice of “red rain” suggests a deluge of pain, one that’s drenches him beyond his control.  It’s a despondent, anguished song on an album best known for songs associated with sweeping romantic gestures (“In Your Eyes”) and overt sexual come-ons (“Sledgehammer”).

As frequent commenter Jerad would point out, R.E.M. covered this song during a radio session in the 1980s (and is available on the In the Attic collection of rarities I.R.S. put out in the late ‘90s).  In between two songs from Reckoning, Michael Stipe sings the chorus of the song and one other line – “I come to you defenses down / With the trust of a child.”  This line is Gabriel’s final attempt to rid himself of the “red rain” – since all the extra effort did nothing to stop the suffering, he submits himself to the person in pain (and in doing so, suggests to me that he’s the one causing the suffering).  Stipe’s selection of the line shares the same feeling of submission and works in a similar way.  R.E.M.’s medley begins with “Time After Time,” a song that suggests a relationship damaged by the same fight over and over.  The medley ends with “So. Central Rain,” a song about regret over eroded dreams.  Both Stipe and Gabriel end up in the same place – after the rain, they’re left vulnerable and regretful.  While Stipe apologies in the aftermath in his medley, Gabriel seems happy enough just to be able to put his umbrella away.

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