Summer Anne’s Best 125 Songs of the 2000s: #81

“Rain” by Patty Griffin

Read the introduction for details on my criteria.

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Patty Griffin is a songwriter in the tradition of Carole King and Joni Mitchell. She is a prolific and successful artist in a field dominated by men, and she uses her femininity as an aid rather than seeing it as a roadblock. She writes passionately about loneliness, heartbreak, dancing, baking, memory, and the world from the perspective of someone sensitive, empathetic, maternal, and wise. Listening to her songs is often akin to being held by my mother or consoled by a best lady friend.

This song is so simply, beautifully, brutally descriptive of the lowest depth of sadness that it’s hard for me to even want to listen to it when I’m relatively happy . At times in my life when I have felt the worst, though, this song has been a loyal companion. There is a tiny, almost intangible shred of hopefulness in between Patty’s pleas for love and description of loneliness and heartbreak. She is holding on. This song helps me do so.