Randy Newman / Randy Newman / 1968
I Think It's Going to Rain Today
quietly despairing, deadpan
A short, spare piece built almost entirely on images of decay and false cheer, undercut by a refrain that turns 'kindness' into something ironic and exhausted. The song reads as a portrait of urban isolation and emotional numbness, delivered with a flatness that makes its despair feel matter-of-fact rather than melodramatic.
urban decay isolation irony of charity/kindness emotional numbness alienation
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker observing a bleak cityscape, addressing no one in particular; the voice is detached and possibly self-deceiving, noting suffering and generosity slogans with the same flat tone it uses for weather.
What happens
The song moves through a sequence of static images rather than a plot: broken buildings, artificial smiles, a lonely gesture of petty cruelty toward an inanimate object, and finally public signage urging charity. Each verse ends on the same weather observation, which comes to feel like the only stable fact the speaker can hold onto.
How it's built
Three verses share an identical final line, creating a refrain that functions almost like a chorus of resignation. A short middle section breaks the pattern with a first-person action (kicking a can), giving the only moment of direct behavior amid otherwise observational verses. The lack of a bridge or resolution reinforces the sense of stasis.
Section by section
Opening verse
“Broken windows and empty hallways”
The song opens with plain, unadorned imagery of urban ruin. There's no metaphorical embellishment yet, just a flat inventory of decay that sets the tone for everything that follows.
First refrain
“Human kindness is overflowing”
The refrain's claim of abundant kindness is immediately suspect given what precedes it. The tension between statement and image is the song's central mechanism, and it never resolves — the line simply repeats until it starts to sound hollow.
Second verse
The description of stylish scarecrows with fixed smiles pushes the imagery from urban decay into social artifice — people performing warmth while actually repelling connection. It widens the critique from environment to human behavior.
Middle section
The shift to first-person action breaks the observational distance of the verses. A small act of destructiveness toward a discarded object reads as displaced self-loathing or a stand-in for how the speaker feels treated by others — cruelty enacted on the only thing available to be cruel to.
Final verse
Public signage urging charitable action appears almost mockingly bright against the accumulated bleakness. The speaker registers the message without evident belief in it, and the song closes on the same weather line, offering no resolution, just more of the same forecast.
Craft
- irony
- The recurring line about abundant kindness is undercut by imagery of neglect and hollow gestures, so the phrase reads as sarcastic or numb rather than sincere.
- pathetic fallacy
- The weather forecast that closes each verse mirrors the speaker's emotional climate, using an ordinary meteorological observation as an image of encroaching gloom.
- symbolism
- The tin can becomes a stand-in for the self or for discarded human worth, treated carelessly the way the speaker feels treated by the world.
- juxtaposition
- Images of civic uplift (signs urging people to help the needy) sit next to descriptions of abandonment and artifice, exposing the gap between public rhetoric and lived reality.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a study in emotional flatness under urban alienation: kindness has become a slogan, not a felt reality, and the narrator's deadpan delivery of both despair and civic optimism suggests exhaustion rather than outrage. An alternative reading takes the refrain more sincerely, as a genuine, weary hope that kindness persists somewhere despite the surrounding wreckage — the ambiguity of tone (helped by Newman's characteristic vocal flatness) makes both readings viable without the song tipping decisively toward either.
Context
Newman is known for using deadpan, often unreliable narrators and a spare, classically-informed piano style; this song, from his 1968 debut, is frequently noted for its brevity and orchestral restraint compared to the satire found in his later, more overtly ironic character songs. It has been covered by several artists, notably in more melodramatic arrangements that shift its tone toward straightforward sorrow rather than ambiguity.
Listen for
- The repeated closing line and how its tone shifts (or doesn't) each time it returns
- The plainness of the piano arrangement against the bleakness of the imagery
- The brief first-person action in the middle section as the song's only concrete event
- The contrast between public/civic language and private despair in the final verse
About Randy Newman
Randall Stuart Newman is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and arranger. Born in Los Angeles to an extended family of Hollywood film composers, he is known for his Americana-inspired songs, non-rhotic Southern-accented singing, and lyrics that are often mordant or satirical and delivered by an unreliable narrator.
b. 1943 / United States
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