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The Beatles
Rain
The band was recorded fast and slowed down, the voice slow and sped up, and the ending runs backwards.
Hollow marks: the other 49 scored songs · Hatched band: the Crossover Zone
The case
The strongest honest argument for each side, then the ruling.
The Garcia argument
Underneath the treatment is a band playing together, and it is one of their most energetic rhythm tracks, with drumming that sounds improvised bar to bar. The backwards vocal, by one account, was found by accident when a tape was threaded the wrong way.
The Lennon argument
What you hear was never played. The rhythm track was recorded fast and slowed down, which lowered its pitch and thickened it. The vocal was recorded slow and sped up. The coda is the vocal reversed. The Beatles mimed it on television and never attempted it on stage.
The verdict: GLI 91
A written song whose identity is its sound, and the sound is a property of tape. It sits one point above I Am the Walrus because nothing in it was left to chance at the mix.
What is fixed
- Tape speeds
- The reversed coda
- Melody and lyric
What is open
- The drumming, on the day it was played
Evidence dimensions
Each runs from 0, Garcia, to 100, Lennon. Their weighted composite is 91. The published GLI is 91, the same.
A fixed song with a constructed coda.
It was mimed for television and never played live.
The song was written. Its sound was designed.
Built by altering tape speed in both directions.
Nearly the maximum. Nobody played what is heard, at the speed it is heard.
Transformational tolerance
The tune survives. The record is a set of speed changes that cannot be performed.
Confidence: 86%
The tape techniques are documented. Who thought of the backwards vocal is disputed.
Keep arguing
Every placement is relative. These are the songs this one was measured against.
Cross-band twin
Closest song from the other band
Attics of My LifeGLI 88The most Lennon song the Dead played, and a choir could sing it.Compare the twoEditorial counterpart
Chosen because it argues back
Fire on the MountainGLI 27A song sealed at 2:59 against a two-chord cycle that ran for fifteen minutes.
Compare the twoThe record
- The rhythm track was played faster than intended and the tape slowed on playback, lowering the pitch and changing the texture.Source ↗
- Lennon's lead vocal was recorded with the machine slowed, so it sounds higher on playback.Source ↗
- The coda has Lennon's vocal played backwards.Source ↗
- The Beatles never performed it live.Source ↗
Where the sources disagree
- Lennon and George Martin each claimed to have come up with the backwards vocal.
Catalog facts
- Catalog no.
- GLI·TB·012
- Artist
- The Beatles
- Writers
- Lennon–McCartney
- Release
- Paperback Writer / Rain (1966)
- Released
- 10 June 1966
- Duration
- 2:59
Sources
Classified 5 October 2026