Pretty sure when Brook Benton recorded "Rainy Night in Georgia" he wasn't thinking about being on any list of "greatest songs" put together by a bunch of rock-n-roll journalists 34 years later.
Come to think of it, I'm not exactly sure what Tony Joe White was thinking about when he wrote the song. He's quoted as saying, "I knew about rainy nights in Georgia because I drove a dump truck for the highway department."
Okayyyy...
Did he drive the truck at night? Were Georgian dump truck drivers required to moonlight as meteorologists?
And my biggest question is...is he happy or sad?
I mean, there's no doubt that, musically, the song feels all melancholy and depressed, but then there are lyrics like "Seems I hear your voice callin' it's all right" and "Late at night when it's hard to rest I hold your picture to my chest and I feel fine."
Maybe Tony Joe was confused about it all himself and that's why he just tossed away all thoughts of a narrative flow and turned the end of the song into a global weather report:
But it's a rainy night in Georgia
Baby, it's a rainy night in Georgia
I feel it's rainin' all over the world
Kind of lonely now
And it's rainin' all over the world
Oh, have you ever been lonely, people?
And you feel that it was rainin' all over this man's world
You're talking 'bout
A-rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin'
Rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin'
A-rainin', a-rainin', rainin' over the world
I said now, rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin', rainin'
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