Magazine / Magic, Murder and the Weather / 1981
About the Weather
wry, anxious, coolly analytical with an undertow of dread
A song about emotional unpredictability disguised as a meteorological report, where the weather becomes a running metaphor for a partner's shifting moods and the narrator's own inability to control either. It's clinical and detached on the surface, but the detachment itself starts to crack by the final line.
emotional volatility detachment as coping mechanism control and helplessness relationships as forecasting self-awareness undercut by irony
Who's speaking
A narrator addressing a lover or ex directly, using meteorological language as a defense against naming feelings outright; the voice is self-consciously composed but reveals itself as unreliable in its final admission
What happens
The song opens by equating a person's changeability with the weather, then moves through a sequence of small domestic and physical images (a broken window, rain, a sunlit fountain) that trace the relationship's instability without ever stating what's actually happening between the two people. The recurring 'chain of events' refrain suggests the narrator is trying to rationalize or scientifically track the partner's emotional shifts. The final line breaks the composed tone, admitting the narrator is just as changeable and finds that terrifying.
How it's built
Built on a verse-chorus-refrain loop with the weather conceit as the connective tissue; the 'chain of events, change of heart' lines function as a mantra-like bridge repeated twice each cycle, reinforcing the idea of obsessive tracking. The closing line breaks from the pattern entirely, a single unrepeated confession that recontextualizes everything before it as projection.
Section by section
Opening verse/chorus
“the weather's variable so are you”
The song's central conceit is stated immediately and bluntly: the partner's mood is likened to weather patterns, something unpredictable and beyond anyone's influence. The question about having a ticket suggests departure or escape is already on the table, positioning the relationship as something the narrator suspects is ending before it's said aloud.
Second verse
The broken window and rain pouring into the narrator's ear create a strange, almost surreal image of vulnerability and intrusion—private space and pain literally leaking in. The offhand comment about the week feeling like a career suggests emotional exhaustion has become routine, something to be endured rather than resolved.
First refrain
The repeated language of tracking a change of heart 'in depth' parodies scientific detachment. It reads as a coping mechanism—turning heartbreak into a subject of study rather than something felt directly, which ironically reveals how much it hurts.
Third verse
“you dislike the climate but you like the place”
This image separates the partner's feelings about the relationship's conditions from their attachment to its setting or comfort, suggesting someone who complains but stays. The narrator's hope that they 'learn to live with what you choose' carries a resigned, faintly bitter edge, as if giving up on trying to change them.
Closing line
“i'm so changeable, it's so frightening”
The final admission collapses the song's ironic distance. All the earlier analysis of the partner's instability turns out to double as self-diagnosis, and the composed, almost bureaucratic tone of the verses is revealed as a mask over the narrator's own fear of their own unpredictability.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- Weather stands in for emotional instability throughout, letting the narrator discuss volatility in impersonal, almost scientific terms rather than direct emotional language.
- pathetic fallacy (inverted)
- Instead of nature mirroring feeling, feeling is described using nature's vocabulary, which flattens emotion into something observed rather than felt.
- refrain as obsession
- The repeated 'chain of events' lines mimic compulsive analysis, someone trying to explain away hurt by treating it like data.
- ironic reversal
- The composed, quasi-scientific tone collapses in the final line, revealing the narrator was never as stable or objective as the framing suggested.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the weather metaphor as a defense mechanism: framing emotional chaos in impersonal, meteorological terms lets the narrator avoid confronting feelings directly, right up until the closing line forces an admission that they are just as volatile as the person they've been describing. An alternative reading is that the whole song is really about the narrator's own psychology projected onto the partner—the 'you' addressed throughout may be as much a mirror as a separate person, with the final line simply making explicit what was implied all along.
Context
Magazine, formed by Howard Devoto after his early Buzzcocks period, were known for merging punk's tension with more art-rock and post-punk complexity—cerebral lyrics, angular guitar work, and a detached vocal delivery. 'About the Weather' appears on their final studio album before the band's initial breakup, and its wry, controlled unease fits the band's broader interest in irony and emotional distance as lyrical strategies. I don't have specific documented details about the song's writing or recording context beyond general knowledge of the band and album.
Listen for
- the shift in tone between the clinical verses and the sudden emotional exposure of the last line
- how the repeated 'chain of events' phrase builds an almost obsessive, list-like rhythm
- the way imagery moves from domestic interiors (a broken window) to open public space (a fountain), tracking a kind of emotional distancing
- Devoto's vocal delivery, which likely underscores the ironic detachment before the final confession
About Magazine
Magazine were a British rock band formed in 1977 in Manchester, England by singer Howard Devoto and guitarist John McGeoch. After leaving the punk rock group Buzzcocks in early 1977, Devoto decided to create a more progressive rock band.
1977 - present / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue