“Red Rain” by Peter Gabriel

So, Peter Gabriel's fifth solo album, opens with "Red Rain", and it opens like a storm front rolling in off the sea. Jerry Marotta's drums thunder, Stewart Copeland adds a restless hi-hat, Tony Levin's bass rumbles low, and the guitars of Daniel Lanois and David Rhodes shimmer around Gabriel's piano, synthesizer and sampler. Gabriel sings lead and stacks his own backing vocals with Rhodes, and the whole thing builds into a vast, aching swell that feels closer to weather than to a pop song.

Gabriel wrote it alone and produced it with Lanois, who also engineered with Kevin Killen, while David Bascombe handled the recording. It first went out as a promotional single in 1986 and got a proper release the next year, charting in several European countries.

It has stayed close to Gabriel ever since. The song turns up on his compilations, including Shaking the Tree: Sixteen Golden Greats, and it has been part of his live shows since the This Way Up Tour. It also landed on Rainbow Warriors, a Greenpeace benefit album from Geffen Records with more than 25 tracks from the likes of INXS, Sting and the Grateful Dead.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.