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

Al Kooper

Al KooperSongwriter Interviews

Kooper produced Lynyrd Skynyrd, played with Dylan and the Stones, and formed BS&T.

Oliver Leiber

Oliver LeiberSongwriter Interviews

Oliver Leiber talks about writing and producing hits for Paula Abdul, and explains his complicated relationship with his father, the songwriter Jerry Leiber.

Harry Shearer

Harry ShearerSongwriter Interviews

Harry is Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap, Mark Shubb in The Folksmen, and Mr. Burns on The Simpsons.

Don Dokken

Don DokkenSongwriter Interviews

Dokken frontman Don Dokken explains what broke up the band at the height of their success in the late '80s, and talks about the botched surgery that paralyzed his right arm.

Gene Simmons of Kiss

Gene Simmons of KissSongwriter Interviews

The Kiss rocker covers a lot of ground in this interview, including why there are no Kiss collaborations, and why the Rock Hall has "become a sham."

Meshell Ndegeocello

Meshell NdegeocelloSongwriter Interviews

Meshell Ndegeocello talks about recording "Wild Night" with John Mellencamp, and explains why she shied away from the spotlight.