From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, Eddie Rabbitt enjoyed amazing success on the Billboard country chart, releasing 17 singles that reached No. 1 on the tally. By the late 1970s, the singer-songwriter also began scoring Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.
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Among these crossover hits were the title song to the Clint Eastwood film Every Which Way But Loose (No. 30, 1979), “Suspicions” (No. 13, 1979), and “Drivin’ My Life Away” (No. 5, 1980).
“Drivin’ My Life Away” was the lead single from Rabbitt’s sixth studio album, Horizon. Eddie followed it with “I Love A Rainy Night,” an upbeat ode to stormy evenings.
On January 17, 1981, the song became Rabbitt’s eighth No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart (“Drivin’ My Life Away” was his seventh). “I Love A Rainy Night” knocked Merle Haggard’s “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here And Drink” from the top spot. It was dethroned a week later by Dolly Parton’s own country crossover classic “9 To 5.”
A few weeks later, on February 28, 1981, “I Love A Rainy Night” became Rabbit’s first and only single to top the Billboard Hot 100. The song that it toppled from No. 1 on the pop-singles tally was none other than “9 To 5.” “I Love A Rainy Night” enjoyed a two-week stay atop the Hot 100 before “9 To 5” leapfrogged back to No. 1.
“I Love A Rainy Night” also was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart for three weeks in January 1981.
More About “I Love A Rainy Night”
Rabbitt co-wrote “I Love A Rainy Night” with his frequent songwriting partners Even Stevens and David Malloy.
Rabbitt had come up with the initial idea for the song in the late 1960s, when he’d spoken the title phrase into a tape recorder as he watched a storm one evening. Eddie rediscovered the tape some years later as he rummaged through some old cassettes in his basement.
In a 2014 interview with Nashville newspaper The Tennessean, Stevens recalled that Rabbitt mentioned the idea for the tune during numerous writing sessions with him and Malloy. It apparently took quite a while, though, before they were able to put the song together.
“When we’d get together to write, he’d always bring up this song title,” said Stevens. “He really didn’t have the melody, but he had this little idea. And he says, ‘I just thought, one night, I wasn’t depressed during a rainstorm. I was really happy, and I put this little thing down. We ought to write that.’ So he’d bring it up, and I’d go, ‘Eh, I don’t know what to do with it.’ … And then one night, it just clicked.”
More About Rabbitt
Before enjoying success as a solo performer, Rabbitt wrote some hit songs for other renowned artists. He co-wrote “Kentucky Rain,” which was a Top-20 hit on the Hot 100 for Elvis Presley in 1970. Eddie also penned “Pure Love,” a country chart-topper for Ronnie Milsp in 1974.
Rabbitt died of lung cancer in May 1998. He was 56.
(Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
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