Songfacts®:

• This is the title track of Alice in Chains sixth album. The record was partially recorded at Seattle's Studio X (formerly Bad Animals Studios), the same location where the band recorded their 1995 self-titled LP. It is the first Alice in Chains album in 22 years to be recorded in their hometown.
• The album name is a nod to Mount Rainier, a volcano that overlooks Seattle, and also to the city's cloudy, damp weather. The lyrics of its title song pay tribute to the city's music scene that launched bands such as Alice in Chains themselves, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Frontman Jerry Cantrell explained UK newspaper The Sun:
  
  "The sentiment in Rainier Fog is all about home. It's about the obscurity from where we came to rising above the clouds and the fog. But it's not just looking back. There was no big plan. We had the tunes, we went to Seattle, and the album title just kinda lined itself up right there. I mean, you can see Mount Rainier from pretty much wherever you are in Seattle."
• Jerry Cantrell told Rolling Stone the track is a tribute to the Seattle music scene that launched his band, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Nirvana and others. He explained:
  
  "This song is a little homage to all of that: where we come from, who we are, all of the triumphs, all of the tragedies, lives lived."
• The song's tongue-and-cheek music video incorporates scenes set in and loosely inspired by Mt. Rainier. They include shots of walking bottles of beer and Big Foot. The goofy clip was directed by Peter Darley Miller who also shot the band's 2013 mockumentary AIC 23.
  
  "In a world where things are becoming increasingly serious, with 'Rainier Fog' we have continued our long tradition of making asses out of ourselves in videos," drummer Sean Kinney explained of the surreal visual.