With their 1999 document The Guy Who, Travis become some of the UK’s largest bands. A lot of that was once all the way down to their indelible singalong Why Does It At all times Rain On Me?, which become a type of songs that was once shooting up all over on the top of its recognition. It was once at the radio, in pubs, taking part in at the jukebox within the Rovers Go back, for your uncle’s automotive – anyplace you have been, you ran into Why Does It At all times Rain On Me?. And but, in a up to date interview with this author for The New Cue, Travis frontman Fran Healy mentioned the tune’s luck was once a long way from confident. On the time of recording it, the Scottish quartet weren’t even certain if it could be a unmarried. Healy went into the main points in regards to the advent in their monster hit.
“It was once by no means in point of fact going to be a unmarried,” he started, explaining that almost all of the gang’s hopes have been pinned on earlier two singles Writing To Succeed in You and Driftwood. “I needed to have this dialogue with Andy MacDonald [Travis’ label boss] as it simply wasn’t the most obvious unmarried on the time. Everybody was once considering Writing To Succeed in You and Driftwood, ‘those are large songs!’, so we put Writing To Succeed in You out first and it did OK, then Driftwood got here out and did slightly higher after which it was once the subject of the 3rd unmarried. I consider sitting in Andy’s place of job and my argument was once, ‘It’s summer time, it’s Britain, it’s gonna rain, Wimbledon is gonna be on, let’s pitch it to Wimbledon’. We have been determined! In the end, Andy was once like, ‘Nice, we’ll do it’ and we needed to do an edit as it’s moderately a protracted tune at the album so we shortened it. We despatched Dylan, our plugger, off to all of the radio stations with it after which Wimbledon got here and it didn’t rain, we have been like, ‘We’re fucked!’.”
The tune’s large leap forward, Healy recalled, got here later that month after they performed a suitably soaked set at Worthy Farm. “We performed Glastonbury and it rained and it modified the entire process our lives perpetually. The next 12 months, everybody knew it. We headlined Glastonbury the following 12 months! That’s how large that tune were given, it was once bonkers. It’s a type of songs that hit a nerve and also you by no means know when that’s going to occur. Everybody within the tune industry loves to be slightly smug and say, ‘Smartly, I knew’ however you by no means know.”
Healy recalled that the monitor had its origins in a iciness vacation the frontman took to Israel to hunt out slightly of a warmth and solar at nighttime months. It rained the entire time. “I sat within the room depressing and wrote that little bit, “Why does it at all times rain on me?”, to cheer myself up,” he mentioned. “I assumed, ‘That’s moderately excellent’, nevertheless it gave the impression of a verse, it didn’t sound like a refrain. 3 months later I wrote the, ‘I will be able to’t sleep this night’ bit and I used to be like, ‘Smartly that without a doubt appears like a verse’ and I remembered I’d written one thing that may click on with it and went via my mind and located it and glued it at the finish. It was once by no means a slam dunk. Driftwood, we have been like, ‘That is mega, that is large!’. However this one took some time to poke its approach out of the shell.”
As for the reality it become unavoidable, Healy doesn’t disagree. As soon as, he was once even compelled to accomplish it at the karaoke device via a Glasgow pub’s landlord. “The executive was once like, ‘Wee guy, move and sing your tune, it’s at the karaoke device’. I’m like, ‘In reality?’. He was once like, ‘Pass on!’, so he opens up the karaoke device in the course of the day and all of the previous women would are available in for his or her lunch cos it was once an inexpensive, excellent cut price lunch, so that you’d get the pink rinse brigade in,” he ;aughed. “I sung Why Does It At all times Rain On Me? and on the finish of it, I put the mic down and I used to be strolling throughout the chairs against the band and this wee lady reached out and he or she was once like, ‘Son, you’re awfully excellent at that, that sounded precisely adore it does at the radio’. I used to be like, ‘Thank you so much!’.”
Watch Travis carry out their leap forward rendition of Why Does It At all times Rain On Me? at Glastonbury 1999 under:
