Songfacts®:

• A love song written by lead singer Shane MacGowan, this is one of the most popular Pogues songs and was included in every setlist from their reformation in 2001 to their final performance on August 9, 2014.
• This is the song where Shane MacGowan and producer Elvis Costello fell out with each other during the final mix. Costello wanted to keep an oboe on the song and MacGowan a flugelhorn (a kind of trumpet). MacGowan got his way and Costello later washed his hands of the recording.
  
  Eventually the song was released in three versions: with the flugelhorn on the original English release and with the oboe on the American/Canadian release. Five years later in 1991 the third version of the song - a remix with new overdubs, produced by Steve Lillywhite - was released containing elements of both oboe and flugelhorn.
• Nick Cave - an admirer of Shane MacGowan's writing - recorded this song in 1992 and released it as a B-side. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Christian - Copenhagen, Denmark, for all above
• Cave sang the song again at MacGowan's funeral on December 8, 2023, with slightly altered lyrics. Cave sang: "Now this song is over. We'll never find out what it means," instead of the original: "Now this song is nearly over. We many never find out what it means."
• Shane MacGowan received a diagnosis of pneumonia three hours before the band were due on-stage in Malmo, Sweden. During a couple of precious free weeks recuperating at his one-bedroom flat in King's Cross, London, he penned "Rainy Night In Soho."
  
  "I wrote that in one night," he told his biographer Ann Scanlon. "When you're out of your head and a song as finely honed and as lyrically polished as that comes out in the time it takes to write it, you know that something has helped you to do it." (source: Mojo magazine).
• The Pogues knew Shane MacGowan had finished "A Rainy Night in Soho" when he arrived at rehearsal dressed for the occasion. "He had his nice suit on and these latticed sandals and had the whole thing in his head," accordion player James Fearnley told The Guardian.
  
  MacGowan then explained exactly what everyone should do: "You play this; this little hook goes there." Fearnley described it as "an amazing experience."