29 Best Songs About Wind & Windy Days
Contents
11. Ride the Wild Wind by Queen
Song Year: 1991
Queen drummer Roger Taylor wrote Ride the Wild Wind as another tribute to how much he loves cars. The other Taylor-penned piece about cars was I’m in Love with My Car, the B-side to Bohemian Rhapsody.
The lyrics alternate between talking about a whirlwind and a wild wind. Riding either one usually connotes a dangerous undertaking, and with the sounds of an Audi revving in the background, the assumption is that this is a song about driving a fast car.
12. Winter Winds by Mumford and Sons
Song Year: 2009
The narrator in Winter Winds is torn between doing what’s probably best for him and what he wants. Winter represents the end of things very often, and that’s the case here, too. The relationship the narrator sings about is on the rocks, but he understands a few things about it:
- She’s working hard to keep things together.
- He isn’t.
- And he isn’t because he doesn’t know if this is what he wants, even though he recognizes that this relationship is good for him.
The heart wants what the heart wants. And sometimes it doesn’t want what it doesn’t want.
13. Wild is the Wind by David Bowie
Song Year: 1976
While Johnny Mathis recorded Wild is the Wind as the title track of the 1957 film, and Nina Simone recorded it a couple of different times, David Bowie’s version is haunting, if for no other reason than his resounding baritone voice stretching notes out and occasionally flipping into an unexpected falsetto.
The gist of the song is that the speaker loves his partner with the intensity, unwaveringness, and unpredictability of the wind. Since wind is such a vital part of how our environment functions, it’s an archetypal comparison.
14. They Call the Wind Maria by Harve Presnell
Song Year: 1969
Paint Your Wagon was a Lerner & Loewe show that debuted on Broadway in 1951. It was a show about the Gold Rush, and it was a big hit. In 1969, when Paramount Pictures made a film version (featuring a singing Clint Eastwood), They Call the Wind Maria, sung by Harve Presnell, who was decidedly NOT the star of the film, stole the whole thing.
The ballad is a melancholy meditation on missing a loved one, something all the miners would have experienced as they left their friends and families behind to find fortune out west.
15. Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts
Song Year: 1972
Before we seemed to choose a Song of the Summer every year, Summer Breeze was something of the default every year for decades.
The song’s easy-going feeling makes it a yacht rock staple that helps the wistful longing of the song not sting quite so much. With each breath of the summer wind, the narrator thinks back on good times from past summers that are long over.
16. The Wind by Mariah Carey
Song Year: 1991
The laid-back jazz chords that open The Wind telegraph the song’s roots, as it began life as a jazz instrumental piece on a Keith Jarrett album from the 1950s.
In the lyrics that Mariah Carey wrote for her version of it, she uses the wind as a metaphor for both time and tragedy, as that wind has taken away a friend who was killed in a car wreck. There is longing and regret in the singer’s hope that the friend knew how much Carey loved her.
17. The Wind Blows by The All-American Rejects
Song Year: 2008
The recurring promise in The Wind Blows is that the speaker will leave the relationship the next time the wind blows, which seems to indicate that, no matter what, this coupling will end.
Not every love story ends in screaming matches and dramatic exits. Sometimes they just end because they have run their course.
18. Idiot Wind by Bob Dylan
Song Year: 1975
Bob Dylan’s lyrics often shine a light on people behaving badly, and sometimes those people make up all of society. In Idiot Wind, he does that, because he also shines the same light on himself.
The idiot wind in question is a metaphorical wind that seems to blow stupid into all of us as we seem to be actively trying to burn down civilization and the planet on which it’s situated.
Including himself in the mix, Dylan seems to argue that we’re all responsible for the bad things in the world, but by the same token, we can all effect change.
19. Watch the Wind Blow By Tim McGraw
Song Year: 2003
Written by singer-songwriter Anders Osborne, Watch the Wind Blow by Tim McGraw is a number-one country hit. In addition to its catchy melody and easy feeling, the song may have grabbed the public’s attention because it’s about relaxing.
To sit and watch the wind blow is, essentially, to do nothing. Anyone who’s spent a lazy Saturday with a significant other can attest to how nice that can be.
20. She’s Like The Wind by Patrick Swayze ft. Wendy Fraser
Song Year: 1987
Patrick Swayze not only delivered the worst line in all of cinematic history in 1987’s Dirty Dancing (Nobody puts Baby in a corner), but he also contributed music to the soundtrack. He co-wrote She’s Like the Wind for a 1984 film that ended up not using it, but the producers of Dirty Dancing liked it and included it in the soundtrack.
Just exactly how she’s like the wind remains a mystery, but the song was a worldwide top-ten hit, and for some reason, it charted in Sweden in 2009. Okay, that probably had to do with Swayze dying that year.