As the saying goes, “When it rains, it pours.” When something goes wrong, it seems more things go wrong and things will never be right again. The frustration and despair of this experience is captured in UK- based rock group The Goodstock Project and their newest single, “This Rain”. Check it out on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd9Pw0veXYY
The song opens with vocalist June singing how tired she is of the endless rain she’s enduring backed by acoustic guitar and piano (both played by Ol). The bass (Jon) and drums (Ben) come crashing in by the second verse.
‘I’ve black-lidded eyes,
And there are cold stormy skies,
The easy escape is the one we can’t take
Another reason we all must apologise”
Of the song’s inspirations, the band states the song is about second chances. It’s written from the perspective of a positive minded person constantly being faced with a negative response from another. The ‘rain’ is a metaphor for an incessant downpour of ‘reasons why not’.
In fact, the song is reminiscent of many blues inspired classic rock songs. One in particular that comes to mind in terms of the guitar licks and lyrical content is David Bowie’s “Rock n’ Roll Suicide”.
Although Bowie’s song is edgier in tone, his song and The Goodstock Project’s “The Rain” evoke a similar feeling of talking someone down from the ledge. A key difference is that “The Rain” brings to mind one person gradually calming themselves down and reframing things in a better light. By the time the guitar solo comes in later in the song, hope has sprung anew.
Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/track/2pXpZKbfVd4HKr5gFe6YTQ?si=df1cb5050f0d4f61&nd=1
Accompanying the single is a music video that shows the group’s individual roles becoming whole. Using their phones, each of them initially filmed themselves playing their instruments or singing. These raw takes were then given to their production editor Speaks, who cleaned up the takes and added the final touches. The band jokingly refers to this as “the 2020 lockdown method.”
Originally conceived in the Spring of 2020, The Goodstock Project is a collaborative effort initially designed to see if it was possible to make music together without being in the same room.
By 2022, The Goodstock Project had created more singles that included songs such as “The Drop” and “We Mean Well”. These singles would become the group’s first EP, “Remote”, which would be released in October 2022. “The Rain” is the newest single from the EP, following their January 2023 single “Be The One.”