'Blowin' in the wind' and 'Here comes the sun': Musicians love singing about weather

Jason Samenow | The Washington Post | 8 July 2015

Weather is all around us, and has long served as inspiration for music --- sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally.

In a study published Tuesday, researchers from the United Kingdom found weather occupies an impressive place in popular music history.

The researchers examined the frequency and form of weather references in popular music over the last several decades. They found 7 percent of the top 500 greatest songs of all-time listed by Rolling Stone (2011) mention the weather. Over 900 songwriters or singers have written or sung about weather, the study said.

"We were all surprised how often weather is communicated in popular music, whether as a simple analogy or a major theme of a song, such as Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' In The Wind' or The Hollies' 'Bus Stop', where a couple fall in love under an umbrella," said lead author Sally Brown from the University of Southampton in a press release.

Brown and her team closely analyzed the weather-related lyrics in 419 popular songs and a made a number of interesting observations:

    * Sun and sunshine are the most common references, followed by rain. Sun and rain comprised 37 percent of the references.
    * Blizzards and frost are the least frequently referenced, suggesting that generic weather terms are more popular.
    * Weather was often referenced in the context of love --- in roughly one third of the songs in which weather was a major theme.

Interestingly, they found U.S. songs tended to feature more bad weather references in the 1950s and 1960s, when the weather was generally worse (more hurricane landfalls and severe storms), compared to the more benign 1970s and 1980s.

Certain song writers have a proclivity for weather-themed songs, "the most frequent artists being Bob Dylan and John Lennon and Paul McCartney," the study said.

Out of Bob Dylan's 542 songs, 163 contained weather references.

Specific weather events sometimes served as motivation for certain songs, the study revealed. "In 1969, George Harrison wrote the Beatles' hit "Here Comes The Sun" after being inspired by one of the first sunny days of spring after a 'long cold lonely winter'," Brown said.

The study, led by the University of Southampton, together with the Universities of Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle and Reading, also noted over 30 artists, lyricists, or bands had names relating to the weather, such as Wet Wet Wet, The Weather Girls and KC and the Sunshine Band.

"[T]hese findings suggest that there is a universal and strong effect of weather and climate in popular musical culture," the study concluded.

You can view a database of the songs analyzed in the study here.

Or, you can just write your own weather-themed song, or song parody...