Garbage "Only Happy When It Rains (Single & Video)"

"Only Happy When It Rains" is an alternative rock song written and produced by American alternative rock band Garbage for their self-titled debut studio album (1995). It was recorded at the band's own studio, Smart Studios, in Madison, Wisconsin, and is known for its tongue-in-cheek lyrics parodying the typically angst-filled themes of mid-'90s alternative rock.

Replacing "Queer" at the last-minute as the lead-in single for the debut album, "Only Happy When It Rains" was the band's breakthrough track in the United Kingdom, receiving positive reviews from the music press and strong support from BBC Radio One. In the United States, the single built upon the success of "Queer" at alternative radio and in early 1996 charted strongly on the Hot 100.

The music video made MTV's next-big-thing Buzz Bin category, helping "Only Happy When It Rains" to cross over to Top 40 radio formats, and propelling the album Garbage from being a Heatseeker title into the top half of the Billboard 200 album chart. In Europe, where it was the fourth single from Garbage, it followed the success of "Stupid Girl", by reaching the top ten European Alternative Rock airplay charts over the summer of 1996.

"Only Happy When It Rains" is one of Garbage's enduring works, covered by multiple artists, including Metallica, featured as a playable track in the video game Guitar Hero 5, and heard in episodes of '90s television shows such as Homicide: Life on the Street and The X-Files. In 2019, it was used in the Captain Marvel soundtrack.

"Only Happy When It Rains" was written and recorded between March 1994 and May 1995. It was written in sessions with band members Duke Erikson, Shirley Manson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig in Marker's basement recording studio, and recorded at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Bass guitar was played by Mike Kashou, and additional percussion by Pauli Ryan. In the latter stages of the album's recording, Garbage mixed this song twice before it was mastered. At the last minute, Vig made the guitar tracks louder; he later claimed it still did not sound the way he heard it in his head. The mix was noted for Manson's voice being at the same volume as the instruments; in mainstream pop, the lead vocal is usually louder than the instruments. The song is in the key of G♯ minor, the time signature of 4/4, and at a tempo of 120 beats per minute. Its chord progressions are G♯m–F♯–E–C♯m–E–F♯ in the verses and C♯-F♯-A-B in the chorus.

Marker explained the song's bleak lyrics as a mockery of the angsty "wearing your heart on your sleeve thing" prevalent in mid-1990s alternative rock songs, as well as a self-deprecating reference to Garbage's own dark lyrics. Manson explained that the song was "a dig at ourselves because we like records that don't make us feel very happy, and at this so-called 'alternative' scene of 'we're so weird and more wonderful than everybody else'". Vig added that "'Only Happy When It Rains' was "about what happened with grunge and the angst-filled thing which has dominated the American alternative rock scene... With us there's self-deprecation, we have to poke fun at ourselves because we're so incredibly obsessive about the songs and the lyrics, which makes us filled with self-loathing, hurhur." Garbage said they referenced both the title of The Jesus and Mary Chain song "Happy When It Rains" (1987) and Manson's own Scottish psyche. Lyrically, Manson described "Only Happy When It Rains" as "about wanting love but knowing life will always get in the way... yet not being obliterated by that. It's a song for people that know what it is like to live on the dark side of life. It's about devotion but a different kind—a devotion to the truth and to freedom... and to hell with the consequences."

When "Only Happy When It Rains" was remastered in 2007 for Garbage's greatest hits album Absolute Garbage, it had to be reverse engineered from a damaged backup DAT as the analog masters for the debut album had been lost. This resulted in some discernible differences in the remaster. The original master tapes were found a few years later.

In 2015, an early demo mix of "Only Happy When It Rains" was included as a previously unreleased bonus track on Garbage (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition).

The music video for "Only Happy When It Rains" was filmed in mid-January 1996 in Los Angeles by director Samuel Bayer, simultaneously with the video for single "Stupid Girl". As Almo Sounds thought "Only Happy When It Rains" would be more successful, the video was given a higher budget than the video for "Stupid Girl". The music video debuted in the United States on February 12, where MTV playlisted it immediately as a "Buzz clip", thus guaranteeing it heavy rotation.

The video begins with a short prologue sequence in which several children dressed in animal costumes play in an overcast field, before cutting to Garbage as the song begins. Garbage are located in a litter-strewn warehouse, where the male band members destroy vinyl records, videotape and musical instruments as Manson performs to the camera. Some sequences feature Manson performing the song while on her own in dilapidated toilet stalls. The video ends with inter-cut footage of Manson joining the children on the field.

The "Only Happy When It Rains" video was first commercially released – along with out-take footage shot while filming – on VHS and Video-CD on 1996's Garbage Video. A remastered version of the video was later included on Garbage's 2007 greatest hits DVD Absolute Garbage and made available as a digital download via online music services the same year. The "Only Happy When It Rains" video was uploaded to VEVO in 2013.

Continuing their theme of collectible 7-inch vinyl releases, which had seen "Vow" packaged in an aluminum sleeve and "Subhuman" in black rubber, Mushroom packaged the 7-inch format for "Only Happy When It Rains" in a "Prismaboard" (rain-effect) die-cut card sleeve, with a hologram logo sticker on the inner jacket. The B-side of the vinyl was pressed with a double-groove, so that either "Girl Don't Come" or "Sleep" played depending on where the stylus landed; the songs were shorter on the vinyl than they were on the CD or cassette formats to accommodate both on one side of the disc. This pressing was limited to 5,000 copies. The original design for the vinyl was for the sleeve to be made from wood, or corrugated cardboard, with wing-nuts in each corner like a flower-press. The nuts were meant to be unscrewed to find the vinyl disc inside - between ten layers of different types of cardboard.