"Only Happy When It Rains" is a song written and produced by alternative rock group Garbage for the band's self-titled debut studio album. The song was recorded at the band's own recording studio, Smart Studios, in Madison, Wisconsin, being mixed twice before its release. The bleak content of the lyrics was intended as a parody of the angst filled themes present in mid-1990s alternative rock, as well as a sarcastic reference to Garbage's own preference for darker themes.
"Only Happy When it Rains" was released as the third single from the campaign for Garbage in both the United Kingdom (in September 1995) and North America (in February 1996), being issued in three formats vinyl, CD maxi, and cassette. The song received positive reviews, praising the production and Shirley Manson's singing, and became the band's breakthrough single, charting strongly on both the UK Singles Chart and Billboard Hot 100. It also crossover to pop radio formats, propelling their debut album into the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 for the first time, and the song's music video, directed by Samuel Bayer, received much airplay on MTV. "Only Happy When it Rains" has gone onto to be an enduring work for the group, being featured in the video game Guitar Hero 5 and receiving covers by Richard Cheese, Katerina Graham and Metallica.
Read more about Only Happy When It Rains: Composition and Recording, Critical Reception, Single Release and Chart Performance, Music Video, Covers and Other Appearances, Tracklistings and Formats, Credits and Personnel, Comprehensive Charts, Release History
Famous quotes containing the words happy and/or rains:
“Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but that to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death only one tiny creature, the little girl who beat her breast with her little fist, and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears—would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)
“For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the seasons of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)