Clouds are eternally changing, moving and morphing in shape and colour. From torrential storms to fluffy skyscapes, clouds have inspired the passing centuries of artists flickering beneath the white-streamed heavens.
Our playlist collects the best songs about clouds, crossing the genres to exhibit the beautiful impact of nature upon our being.
Songs About Clouds
1. Chanka Khan – Clouds
Chaka Khan’s anthem, Clouds, showcases the many ways in which clouds reflect our emotions.
Against an enlivening disco landscape, featuring backing vocals by a young Whitney Houston, Chaka’s powerhouse vocals dance and unfold like clouds across a bright sky, whilst hiding an array of dark shadows within her lyrics.
Clouds’ lyrics illustrate the inevitable forming of stormclouds, amassing and downpouring even on the warmest days, “It’s gonna rain, it’s gonna rain down tears, of heartaches and fears.
It’s gonna rain, I know for sure, ‘cause you don’t reach me no more. It’s gonna rain, there in the distance is that number one pain.”
2. Iron Maiden – Empire Of The Clouds
Iron Maiden’s stunning track Empire Of The Clouds is an 18-minute heavy metal masterpiece which sonically mimics the lush, sweeping serenade of the clouds through its orchestral elements, matched with striking undertones of darkness that haunt each classical-inspired structural movement.
Empire Of The Clouds harnesses the ancient sound of Earthly rhythms and tranquility, blending it with indomitable historical power and soul-nourishing melodies crushed with thunderstorm-toned distortion.
The lengthy track journeys like clouds across an endless sky, ever-evolving and morphing, with both the striking force and softness of the changing winds.
Maiden enrobe their lyrics with free-spirited references and wartorn terror, scattering many captivatingly evocative lines throughout their verses, such as “Sailors of the sky” and “Mist in the trees, stone sweats with the dew.”
3. Kate Bush – Cloudbusting
Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting, taken from her iconic 1985 album, Hounds Of Love, captures the ethereal beauty of the rain, underlied by an obscure story inspired by the scientist, Wilhelm Reich; a man shrouded in conspiracy for his invention of a rainmaking machine.
Aside from this strange lore, Cloudbusting’s chorus transfers seamlessly to your one true love who brightens every dark day which threatens to drag you down, blanketing the song with spellbinding positivity in the face of misery;
“Every time it rains, you’re here in my head, like the sun coming out, I just know that something good is going to happen, and I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen.”
4. Boy Geogre – Clouds
Boy George illustrates the hazy melancholy of soft, ceaseless drizzle, metaphorising clouds for depression.
While Clouds’ harmony is mesmerizingly sad, its lyrics contrast with optimistic illustrations of the sun that follows every storm, “Parting clouds may clear the sky and let the sunshine fall on us again.”
Boy George offers a tranquil translucence to the despairing veils of rain spilt from the fearsome, black clouds above, crafting a song for anyone driving forth through their bleakness;
“They’re just clouds full of rain, big grey clouds filled with pain, hanging over you, hanging over me, they’re just clouds, it’s all they’ll ever be.
5. One Direction – Clouds
One Direction’s pop rock track Clouds harnesses the free-spirited energy of friendship and youth to craft a song rich with the floating feeling of happiness.
Clouds captures that bright, fresh sense of uplift after the clouds have passed, patterned with compelling hooks resounding with the driving force of a thunderstorm.
Their lyrics are bountiful with sunshined emotion, “We’re never coming back down, we’re looking down on the clouds,” while blending in the metaphor of a cloud’s ever-changing appearance to describe the evolving nature of love, “I know you said that you don’t like it complicated, that you were tired of all the changes, but love is always, always changing.”
6. NF – Clouds
NF’s quirky rap track has a compelling, offbeat energy studded with fearless authenticity and a soundscape that rolls into a dense, heavy atmosphere, overshadowed with a looming threat of torrential release.
Featuring raindrop pattering staccato strings, interspersed with captivating sonic elements as dark and bold as a horror soundtrack, NF’s track proves to be a hypnotic and intoxicatingly unique twist upon the common sound of hip hop/rap music.
7. Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now
Joni Mitchell’s symphonic track, Both Sides Now, captures the sweet streaming ambience of clouds and blue-skies whilst contemplating their symbolism.
From the dreamscape painted upon the heavens, to relentless, stormy downpours, clouds exhibit the divine equilibrium of good and bad; the absolute duality present in all of nature’s creations – an aspect Joni Mitchell weaves seamlessly within her lyrics;
“Rows and floes of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air, and feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way. But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone, so many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way. I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.”
8. Steps – Clouds
Steps’ bubblegum pop track Clouds glimmers with bright-burning positivity, carried by a clean, uplifting sound beaming like sun rays through a storm.
Their lyrics are about believing that life will change like the clouds above, for better and for worse. Through change, you’ll grow to be stronger, while knowing the trouble haunting you will soon pass as smoothly as it came;
“You’re gonna shine so bright, your mama told you, the apple of her eye, her little soldier, when life is getting hard and getting cold, you wanna run… You don’t need to worry now, the sky keeps on changing, you don’t need to work it out, keep your head in the clouds.”
9. Before You Exit – Clouds
Before You Exit’s hauntingly sparse track carries an atmosphere beclouded with grief. Clouds is a delicate, sombre track threading their cloud metaphor to paint the scenery of heaven.
This song was written in the memory of musician Christiana Grimmie, its lyrics laced with deep sky imagery to craft a song with a stunning sentiment, resonating with anybody dealing with the trauma of death, “Please just tell me that you’re alright, are you way up in the sky, laughing, smiling, looking down, saying ‘one day we’ll meet in the clouds’.”
They beautifully place the deceased as the shining sun, gracing the living with brightness and peace, “The light that you left, it helps me to see, a way through all the bitterness, a way to who I really want to be, oh, light up the streets.”