“Gentle Rain”

Back in the days when songwriters wore shirts and ties, there was a tradition of writing English lyrics to foreign melodies. Johnny Mercer did it for “Autumn Leaves.” Sam L. Lewis did it for “Gloomy Sunday.” Paul Anka did it for “My Way.” I guess the romance of that appealed to me, because during a visit to Korea, when I heard a band called Clazziquai play a lovely bossa tune, I immediately wanted to write English lyrics to it. Oddly, the song already shared a title, “Gentle Rain,” with a fairly well-known bossa tune written in the ‘60s by Luiz Bonfa. As I approached the melody, I tried to change the title, but couldn’t find anything that fit as well. So I just wrote my lyric around the existing title. I guess the world could use a little more gentle rain.