Home | Songs By Year | Songs from 1956


The Rain in Spain

Buy The Rain in Spain now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the song. And once you've experienced the song, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




"'The Rain in Spain'" is a song from the musical 'My Fair Lady', with music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. The song was published in 1956.

The song is a turning point in the plotline of the musical. Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering have been drilling Eliza Doolittle incessantly with speech exercises, trying to break her Cockney accent speech pattern. The key lyric in the song is "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain", which contains five words that a Cockney would pronounce with or more like "eye" than the Received Pronunciation diphthong . With the three of them nearly exhausted, Eliza finally "gets it", and recites the sentence with all "proper" long-As. The trio breaks into song, repeating this key phrase as well as singing other exercises correctly, such as "In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen", in which Eliza had failed before by dropping the leading 'H'.

Origin



The phrase does not appear in Shaw's original play 'Pygmalion', on which 'My Fair Lady' is based, but it is used in the 1938 film of the play. According to 'The Disciple and His Devil', the biography of Gabriel Pascal by his wife Valerie, it was he who introduced the famous phonetic exercises "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" and "In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen" into the script of the film, both of which were later used in the song in 'My Fair Lady'.Pascal, Valerie, "The Disciple and His Devil," 'McGraw-hill', 1970. p. 83.

In other languages



Versions of "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" in various languages include:

* Danish: "En snegl p vejen er tegn p regn i Spanien" ("A snail on the road is a sign on rain in Spain")

* Dutch: "Het Spaanse graan heeft de orkaan doorstaan" ("The Spanish wheat has survived the hurricane")

* German: "Es grnt so grn, wenn Spaniens Blten blh'n" ("it turns so green when Spain's flowers bloom")

* Hebrew: "" ("Barad yarad bidrom sfarad haerev": Hail fell in southern Spain this evening.)

* Hungarian: "Lenn dlen des jen dent remlsz."

* Italian: "La rana in Spagna gracida in campagna" ("The frog in Spain croaks in the country side")

* Polish: "W Hiszpanii my, gdy ddyste przyjd dni" ("It drizzles in Spain when come the rainy days")

* Spanish: "La lluvia en Sevilla es una pura maravilla" (The rain in Sevilla is a true marvel) playing with the sound of the "ll").

Usage in other popular culture



*A 1985 British television commercial for Heineken parodies the scene. Sylvestra Le Touzel plays a woman who speaks posh, and after a drink of Heineken a cockney accent appears. It was ranked at number 9 in Campaign Live's 2008 list of the "Top 10 Funniest TV Ads of All Time", and at number 29 in Channel 4's list of the "100 Greatest TV Ads" in 2000.

*1994 in the Greek TV series 'Oi Men Kai Oi Den'.

*In the 'Family Guy' episode "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea", Stewie tries to teach a girl to lose her Cockney accent. Together, he and Eliza sing a parody, "The Life of The Wife is Ended by the Knife."The Internet Movie Transcriptions Database, "[http://www.movietranscriptions.com/240200_Family_Guy_S3_E111.html#p1210 Family Guy S3 E1-11]."Planet Family Guy, "[http://www.planet-familyguy.com/pfg/subtitles/34/ Subtitle Scripts] ."

*The satirical revue 'Forbidden Broadway' set up playwright David Mamet as being exasperated with Madonna's acting style with the lyrics, "I strain in vain to train Madonna's brain."Kilian, Michael, "[https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/24583195.html?dids=24583195:24583195&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Nov+6%2C+1988&author=Michael+Kilian&pub=Chicago+Tribune+%28pre-1997+Fulltext%29&edition=&startpage=28&desc=OFFING+BROADWAY+SATIRICAL+REVUE+GROWS+INTO+A+STAR-BASHING+BIGGIE Offing Broadway Satirical Revue Grows Into A Star-Bashing Biggie]", 'Chicago Tribune', 6 November 1988, p. 28. [http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1988-11-25/lifestyle/0080350265_1_lupone-forbidden-broadway-carol-channing/2 (Full Text)]Kuchwara, Michael, "[http://cox.lubbockonline.com/stories/030500/ent_030500037.shtml Alessandrini zeroes in on next Broadway target]", Knight-Ridder, 5 March 2000. The song is included on the album 'Forbidden Broadway, Vol. 2'.

*'The Simpsons' episode "My Fair Laddy" is itself a parody of 'My Fair Lady', and includes the song "Not On My Clothes" (with the lyrics, "What flows from the nose does not go on my clothes").Clausen, Alf and Michael Price, "[http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/scorch.asp?ppn=SC0085491 Not On My Clothes]", T C F Music Publishing, Inc., 2006.

*In Stephen King's book, 'The Gunslinger,' he writes a parody titled "The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plain". King's novel 'Salem's Lot' also features his changed lyrics recited by Mark Petrie.

*In 2012, a punk rock version of "The Rain in Spain" was featured in comedy-musical TV series 'Glee', episode "Choke". The song was performed by Mark Salling (as his character Puck) and the guys of the series' fictional glee club New Directions.

*In the 195659 revue 'At the Drop of a Hat', Michael Flanders observes in a brief comic monologue that: "Despite all you may have heard to the contrary, the rain in Spain stays almost invariably in the hills."

*On the 32nd episode of the 5th season of the American version of the improvisational comedy series 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', Colin Mochrie leads off a playing of "Weird Newcasters" with a report that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was killed in a mid-air collision with a flock of seagulls and a Boeing 747, with the incident taking place over Barcelona. Mochrie concludes the report with the punchline, "Eyewitnesses report that the reindeer in Spain was hit mainly by the plane."[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH5oQ05Bs70 Whose Line - Colin's "Weird Newscasters" joke (reindeer)]

*During the fourth episode of 'Orphan Black's first season (2013), "Effects of External Conditions", Alison Hendrix practices her Cockney accent with the line.

References




Buy The Rain in Spain now from Amazon

<-- Return to songs from 1956



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1109798152.