Australian band Playlunch have taken on a camp classic for Triple J’s Like a Version. They’ve opted to cover The Weather Girls hit It’s Raining Men.
Each week in the Like a Version slot a musician or band performs one of their own songs and cover a song they love. After delivering the own hit Le Snak, the seven member band moved on to the party classic.
Singer Liam Bell said the track is simply “iconic”.
“It’s just one of the best songs of all time, I feel that it’s goofy – kind of like a novelty song – but we really wanted to take the opportunity to show people just how bad-arse the actual composition of this track is.” Bell said after their performance.
The song was written by 70’s disco singer Paul Jabara and Paul Schaffer – who would go on to front the house band on The Late Show during Dave Letterman’s tenure.
Jabara and Schaffer wrote the song over an afternoon in 1979, but when they offered it to some of the top singers of the day nobody wanted to record it. Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Diana Ross and Cher all reportedly turned it down.
A few years passed before Jabara offered to song to duo Two Tons O Fun, who had served as backing singers to Sylvester. The duo comprised singers Martha Wash and Izora Armstead. They too had reservations about the track and considered it too over-the-top to record, but eventually they gave in and laid down the vocals in 1982.
When Martha Wash spoke to OUTinPerth in 2011 she recalled recording the song and thinking nothing would come of outrageous tune.
“When we initially recorded the song, we did it in like ninety minutes and just walked out of the studio and said, ‘okay Paul, see you later’. That’s really how we left it.” Wash recalled.
“Until months later when we started hearing it in clubs, and Paul was taking the song around to different clubs and asking the DJs to play it. So, it became a big hit in the clubs long before radio even picked up on it.”
Soon Wash and Armstead were changing the name of their act to The Weather Girls and filming a fun video to match the song. The song topped the Billboard dance chart and was nominated for as Grammy Award.
In 1998 Wash teamed up with RuPaul for a new version of the song, but its biggest revival came a few years later when former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell recorded a version of the track.
Halliwell’s 2001 recording of the song was the first single from her second album Scream If You Wanna Go Faster, and it was also featured in the movie Bridget Jones Diary. The video for Halliwell’s version took inspiration from another moment in pop culture, recreating a scene from the 1983 film Flashdance.
Now the song has a new take with Playlunch delivering a male vocal for the tune. The Melbourne band’s new album Sex Ed has just been released.
