Is "Rain" the quintessential Beatles song?

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Originally published at: Is "Rain" the quintessential Beatles song? | Boing Boing

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I was not aware of this Beatles song. Given the small world that I live in and the constant saturation of stories about AI systems generating convincing content I give it a 50/50 chance that this is a purely fabricated phenomenon.

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I only knew it because of this cover:

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Rain is the quintessential Cult song…

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First Beatles song I can remember, age 4. Still one of the best.

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This was my favorite Beatles song for many years. It’s on the “past masters” album which gathered up all their non-album tracks when the albums were released on CD.

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I’d never heard this song before either. I thought I’d heard all the Beatles’ songs at least once.

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From a previous BBS discussion:

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Thanks for this! I saw the Residents on the “King and I” tour in 1990. It was amazing.

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I dont know if its their quintessential song but it’s always been the one song I can’t really imagine anyone not liking. It has a cool melody, nice lyrics, and awesome production. A touch of their India influence too. Not sure how I decided this but it’s just always been the most likeable song.

Kinda surprised to see ppl here who have never heard it, but I guess since it isn’t on any normal LPs and some of those songs (like Dont Let Me Down) tend to get lost.

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If I had written Rain, it would be the greatest achievement of my life.

But for the Beatles, it was Tuesday.

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Best argument for me is that Ringo has always said that this is his favorite Beatles song. I’m amazed that some folks have never heard it and I’m a bit jealous that they are hearing it for the first time now!

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You lucky… lucky… bastard!

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I’m 62, been listening to the Beatles since before they broke up. Never heard of this song before. And I didn’t care for it.

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It’s certainly another song that showcases how great of a bass player Paul was.

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In USA “Rain” was on the album “Hey Jude” which was a collection of the singles that were not on albums. I can’t imagine having missed this.

There isn’t any “quintessential” Beatles song. That’s one of the qualities of their music that makes it so great. They did what was necessary for the song. There was no Beatles style.

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listening to Rain on Spotify now on the Past Masters compilation, I note it has around 7m plays, compared with 78m for “Don’t let me down” so the latter is much better know apparently (probably because it was also on the “Blue Album” compilation which sold millions)

“The Inner Light” has only 2m, now that’s a deep cut by Beatles standards (and a lovely example of Harrison’s eastern obsession, much better than “Within you, Without you” IMO).

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“Rain” was my favorite Beatles song when I was in my teens. Three chords, no waiting.

This is my favorite cover of it.

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well, strangely Dont Let Me Down has more views on YouTube than Hey Jude, 327 million to 261 million. I don’t know if these new metrics apply. One pop culture reference can send millions of people looking up an old song, I think something like that must have happened for Dont Let Me Down which was never a “big” Beatles song.

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