1988 · Behind the Songs
Randy Newman’s weather report, sung from the doorway of Beaches.
Randy Newman wrote “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” in the 1960s, and it became one of his most covered songs — a quiet piano meditation that singers return to when they want to sound thoughtful. Bette Midler recorded her version for the Beaches soundtrack in 1988, the film in which she starred as C.C. Bloom, the brassy singer opposite Barbara Hershey’s quiet aristocrat. Where “Wind Beneath My Wings” — also from Beaches, and already covered on this site — is the film’s big emotional payoff, Newman’s song is its reflective bookend: no orchestra swelling, just a voice reading the weather like a mood.
Her version sits in a long line of covers, and she doesn’t try to outdo them; she sings it like someone watching clouds gather from a window, which is exactly what the film’s friendship story is about. It was never a single, and it lives in the shadow of its soundtrack sibling — but as a piece of Midler interpretation, it’s the subtler performance. Newman writes observers; Midler plays them. That is why the pairing works: the song asks for restraint, and for once she gives it.