June Rain

Album: Antidepressants (2025)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • "June Rain" is Suede's portrait of a fragile soul. Brett Anderson talks about "walking into the traffic flow," a line that either references a roadside suicide or the lonely drift of a ghost. Anderson leaves the matter unresolved. He described it to DIY magazine as "a piece of autofiction, a vignette of a damaged person.
  • The song comes from Suede's 10th album, Antidepressants, the follow-up to Autofiction and the second installment in what frontman Brett Anderson calls a trilogy of "black and white" records. These albums rummage around in weighty subjects - mortality, loneliness, human connection - wrapped inside scenes that feel disarmingly ordinary.
  • In the June rain, well I'll hang myself out to dry

    The title phrase works as a double image: a mundane act of hanging laundry out in the rain alongside a metaphor for emotional exposure. Quintessentially English in its imagery of gray, unsettled skies, the title anchors what Anderson calls a song "about fragility" in something recognizably ordinary; his trademark way of finding the extraordinary in the mundane.
  • Anderson wrote the song with Suede guitarist Richard Oakes. "'June Rain' is one of the best songs we've written in our second chapter," Anderson told Uncut magazine. "It's how I wish we had done 'Still Life' on Dog Man Star: instead of orchestrating we should have kept it as a band song, but these things take decades to learn. It's interesting thematically, it's about fragility, but it's a very celebratory record and in some ways positive."
  • "June Rain," along with the rest of the album, was produced by Ed Buller, the longtime Suede collaborator who produced their first four albums and has been back in the fold since the band's 2012 reunion recordings. "There's a big jump up an octave in the second chorus, which originally wasn't there, but that's what gives the song its sudden intensity," Anderson told DIY magazine. "That was one of Ed Buller's brilliant ideas, it really makes the song."
  • On "June Rain," Anderson employs a spoken-word vocal style. Inspired by contemporary post-punk bands such as Dry Cleaning and Yard Act, Anderson has been developing this delivery across the Autofiction and Antidepressants era. "I'm really enjoying exploring how to talk on our records," he told DIY magazine. "When you get it right there's a real connection with the listener, because it sounds like a human being. Singing can be beautiful, but it's not natural... So it feels like there's an honesty to it, which I liked. There's a brokenness to it."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Graham Bonnet (Alcatrazz, Rainbow)

Graham Bonnet (Alcatrazz, Rainbow)Songwriter Interviews

Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai were two of Graham's co-writers for some '80s rock classics.

Edie Brickell

Edie BrickellSongwriter Interviews

Edie Brickell on her collaborations with Paul Simon, Steve Martin and Willie Nelson, and her 2021 album with the New Bohemians.

Gary Lewis

Gary LewisSongwriter Interviews

Gary Lewis and the Playboys had seven Top 10 hits despite competition from The Beatles. Gary talks about the hits, his famous father, and getting drafted.

Tim McIlrath of Rise Against

Tim McIlrath of Rise AgainstSongwriter Interviews

Rise Against frontman Tim McIlrath explains the meanings behind some of their biggest songs and names the sci-fi books that have influenced him.

Mike Scott of The Waterboys - "Fisherman's Blues"

Mike Scott of The Waterboys - "Fisherman's Blues"They're Playing My Song

Armed with a childhood spent devouring books, Mike Scott's heart was stolen by the punk rock scene of 1977. Not surprisingly, he would go on to become the most literate of rockers.

Tony Joe White

Tony Joe WhiteSongwriter Interviews

The writer of "Rainy Night in Georgia" and "Polk Salad Annie" explains how he cooks up his Louisiana swamp rock.