Songoftheday 9/6/12 - You're old enough some people say to read the signs and walk away...

Supertramp - "It's Raining Again"
from the album ...Famous Last Words... (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (four weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by the British rock group Supertramp, who were formed as a "pet project" of Dutch businessman Sam Miesegaes at the end of the 60s. The group, named after a book by Welsh hobo poet William Henry Davies (hence the "tramp"), put out their self-titled first album in England in 1970. But it wasn't until 1974, after a few personnel changes and a more direct and mainstream writing approach, that Supertramp made their breakthrough with the album Crime of the Century, which went top-5 in the UK and top-40 in America, and the first top-40 hit England with the studio version of "Dreamer" and the US with "Bloody Well Right".

The band then waiting another three years for another hit, the US top-20 single "Give A Little Bit", and then in 1979, they released their classic Breakfast In America. That album went on to sell over four million copies in the US, and gave them two top-10 hits here as well, including their biggest hit in the US and UK, "The Logical Song".

By the start of the 80's Supertramp was in the stratosphere of rock bands around the world, selling millions of albums and selling out concerts (the double album Paris was from these dates), but lead singers Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies had been drifting apart both stylistically and geographically, with Roger settling down in California. ...Famous Last Words... came out in 1982, and would be the last record featuring Hodgson. The first single from the set, "It's Raining Again", features songwriter Roger on vocals and cribs the children's rhyme "It's Raining It's Pouring". It was produced by the band and Peter Henderson, who has worked with the band and others (like Rush) before, and the video starts with an actress dressed like the waitress in the cover of Breakfast In America...

The single frustratingly stalled just outside the American pop top-10 for a month, though it peaked at #5 on adult-contemporary (soft-rock) and #7 on Mainstream Rock radio. It also made the top-10 in a bunch of European countries (#2 in Switzerland, #3 in Germany, for example), but managed only to be a average-charting top-40 hit in their English homeland. The album did great as well, making the US top-5 and the end of the year (I'm one of the ones who bought it on cassette)...

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In 2002 Brazilian guitarist Emmerson Nogueira did a Latin take on the song...

Up tomorrow: a steely Don makes a song about the International Geophysical Year.