#18: It’s Raining Men by the Weather Girls

City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CKGM
Peak Month: March 1983
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #46
Peak Position on UK Singles chart ~ #2
Peak Position on Ireland Single chart ~ #5
Peak Position on Norway Singles chart ~ #8
YouTube: “It’s Raining Men”
Lyrics: “It’s Raining Men”

The Weather Girls are a singing duo formed by Martha Walsh and Izora Armstead in San Francisco in 1976. Walsh was born in San Francisco in 1953, and sang in a school choir in high school. After graduation she joined the gospel group NOW (News Of the World). She also worked as a secretary at a hospital. In 1976, she auditioned to be a backing singer for Sylvester. He was impressed with her vocals and asked if she had another friend who could join her on stage. Walsh invited Izora Rhodes to join her and the pair were named Two Tons o’ Fun, as they were both big girls.
Izora Rhodes was born in Houston (TX) in 1942. She began playing piano at the age of four and started singing when she was eight. She later was named lead vocalist and pianist of San Francisco Inspirational Choir. By 1975, she was a single parent of seven children. She worked as a bartender, a nurse assistant, a piano teacher and vocal coach to make ends meet. In 1976, she remarried and became Izora Armstead.

Armstead and Walsh backed Sylvester on his number-one dance hits “Dance (Disco Heat)” and “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real”.

On January 24, 1980, the duo released their debut self-titled album Two Tons of Fun. The album spawned two number-two dance singles: “Earth Can Be Just Like Heaven” and “I Got the Feeling”. Their second album Backatcha was released later that year. The album spawned a single “I Depend On You” that peaked at number 72 on the Dance chart. In September 1982, Two Tons o’ Fun released “It’s Raining Men”. The single was climbing the charts when the duo changed their name to The Weather Girls.

“It’s Raining Men” is a song written by Paul Jabara and Paul Shaffer. They wrote the song over the course of one afternoon in 1979 and first offered it to Donna Summer. Jabara had written Donna Summer’s chart-topping hit “Last Dance”. However, Summer had become a born-again Christian and at the time she was offered the song she rejected it labeling it “blasphemous.” The songwriters subsequently offered it to Diana Ross, Cher, and Barbra Streisand. Each declined the song, even though Streisand had enjoyed a hit with Jabara’s “The Main Event/Fight”.

“It’s Raining Men” is an over-the-top campy song. It’s asserts “for the first time in history,” the sky is going to start showering the Earth with men. And not just any men. The men raining down from the heavens would be “tall, blond, dark, and lean, rough and tough and strong and mean.” Patrick Garvin, writing in 2013 for the Pop Culture Experiment website comments “Wash and Armstead already had gay cred because of their association with Sylvester, but this song made them icons to the gay community in their own right.”

The song imagines Mother Nature as the source of the unexpected shower on men onto the earth:
God bless mother nature, she’s a single woman, too.
She took of to heaven, and she did what she had to do.
She brought every angel and rearranged the sky,
so that each and every woman could find her perfect guy.

Though the lyrics picture the showering of men as a blessing for single women, “It’s Raining Men” was taken up by the gay men. It became an anthem for the community who delighted in the visage of buff and handsome men falling from the sky.

The weather forecast in the song is that about half-past-ten, “for the first time in history it’s gonna start raining men.” The Weather Girls summon single women to run out into the street to welcome this shower of guys. In this type of rainfall there is no need for umbrellas. Later in the song, the duo invite women to “rip off the roof and stay in bed.”

Songwriter Paul Jabara was born in 1948 into a Lebanese family in Brooklyn, New York. In 1969 he was in the original caste of Hair playing King Herod. That year he also got a small part in the Academy Award winning Midnight Cowboy. He took over the role of Frank-N-Furter in the Los Angeles production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show when Tim Curry left the production to film the movie version in England. In 1974, he appeared in the Sylvester Stallone film The Lords of Flatbush. He also appeared in the 1975 film The Day of the Locust, where he sang a cover of the Marlene Dietrich song “Hot Voo-Doo” in drag. Jabara played the role of a lovelorn and nearsighted disco-goer named Carl in the 1978 film Thank God it’s Friday. In 1981, he appeared in the British comedy film Honky Tonk Freeway.

In 1977 Jabara released his debut album Shout Out. In 1978, Jabara wrote “Last Dance” which was a number-one hit for Donna Summer. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, and a Grammy Award for Best R&B Song. In 1979, Jabara co-wrote “The Main Event/Fight” sung by Barbra Streisand for the film The Main Event where she co-starred with Ryan O’Neal. In late 1979, Jabara’s “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” was a number-one international hit duet for Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer. In 1982, Jabara wrote “Work That Body” which became a Top Ten hit for Diana Ross in both Ireland and the UK. Paul Jabara also wrote songs that were recorded by Bette Midler, Billy Preston, Julio Iglesias and Raquel Welch. Between 1977 and 1986, Paul Jabara released five solo albums. He died in 1992 at the age of 44 of complications related to AIDS.

Co-writer of “It’s Raining Men”, Paul Schaffer, was born in Fort William, Ontario, in 1949. He was raised in a Jewish family. As a child, Shaffer took piano lessons, and in his teenage years played the organ in a band called Fabulous Fugitives with his schoolmates in Thunder Bay. Later, he performed with the “Flash Landing Band” at different venues around Edmonton and the interior of British Columbia. In 1972, he became music director of the Toronto production of Godspell. From 1975 to 1980, he was with the house band for the NBC TV show Saturday Night Live. He collaborated with other performers in the show and was in the 1980 movie Blues Brothers. He later appeared in Blues Brothers 2000.

Beginning in 1982, Shaffer served as musical director for David Letterman’s late night talk shows: as leader of “The World’s Most Dangerous Band” for Late Night with David Letterman (1982–1993) on NBC, for which he also composed the theme song. Later, Schaffer was leader of the CBS Orchestra for the Late Show with David Letterman (1993–2015) on CBS. In 1996, Schaffer directed and produced the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

In 1976 he provided keyboards on Barry Manilow’s Top Ten hit “Weekend In New England” and number-one hit “Looks Like We Made It”. In 1979, he was a session musician for Nigel Olsson on “Dancin’ Shoes”. And in 1980, he was in the studio for Joan Armatrading’s recording of “Me, Myself, I”. In 1984 he played keyboards for The Honeydrippers solo studio album. This included the number-one hit single “Sea Of Love”. 

“Its Raining Men” peaked at #2 in Montreal, Miami, Boston, #2 in Fort Lauderdale, and Sherbrooke (PQ), #4 in Bangor (ME), #7 in Providence (RI), and #8 in Philadelphia.

Internationally, “It’s Raining Men” peaked at #2 in the UK, #5 in Ireland, #8 in Norway, #13 in New Zealand, #16 in Australia and #1 on the Billboard Hot Club Dance Play chart in December 1982. But in 1983, on the Billboard Hot 100 the single stalled at #46. In February 1984, “It’s Raining Men” received a nomination for a Grammy Award in the category Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. The Weather Girls lost out to Rufus & Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody”.

In 2001, British singer and former Spice Girls member Geri Halliwell (she was Ginger Spice) successfully covered “It’s Raining Men”. Her version reached number-one in Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Scotland and the UK. It peaked at #2 in Romania, #3 in Greece, #4 in Australia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland, #5 in Austria, Germany and Spain, #6 in Denmark, #7 in Croatia and Finland, and #10 in Sweden.

In 2006, a musical version of the 1990s film Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert, included “It’s Raining Men” in its list of numbers.

In June 2017, “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls entered on the Spotify Rewind charts and peaked at number one. In 2024, Billboard listed “It’s Raining Men” at #66 on its 70 Top LGBTQ+ Anthems of All Time list.

In 1985, Martha Walsh provided backing vocals for Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway Of Love”.

In 1989, the Weather Girls disbanded. Martha Walsh provided uncredited vocals to the number-three dance hit by Seduction titled “(You’re My One and Only) True Love”. Walsh also provided uncredited vocals for the Italian dance band Black Box. These included “I Don’t Know Anybody Else”, “Everybody Everybody”, “Fantasy” and “Strike It Up”. All four singles were international Top Ten hits, with three of these topping the Billboard Dance Club Chart between 1989 and 1991. As well, in 1990 Walsh provided strong vocals for the number-one hit “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C+C Music Factory. She was a vocalist four years later with the group’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky”. Both singles topped the Billboard Dance Club chart.

Izora Amstead went solo and released a single in 1991 titled “Don’t Let Love Slip Away”. In 1991 Amstead reformed the Weather Girls with her daughter Dynelle Rhodes. Their first album together, Double Tons of Fun, was released in 1993. The album’s lead single “Can You Feel It” peaked at number-two Billboard’s Dance chart. They continued to perform at circuit parties and released an eighth album in 1999.

In 1992, Martha Walsh released her debut solo album Martha Walsh. It contained the number-one Dance Club chart single “Carry On”. Her followup single from the album, “Give It to You” also topped the Dance Club chart. In 1995, Wash embarked on an international tour with the C+C Music Factory. In 1996, Walsh was a featured vocalist on the Todd Terry remake of “Keep On Jumpin'”. Their followup hit, “Something Goin’ On (In Your Soul)”, also topped the Dance Club chart. In 1997, Marsha Walsh recorded a duet with Ru Paul titled “It’s Raining Men…The Sequel”. It topped the Billboard Dance Single Sales chart for one week in November of that year.

Izora Armstead died at the age of 62 in 2004 of heart failure. Prior to Armstead’s passing, new member Ingrid Arthur joined The Weather Girls in 2004. Following Armstead’s passing, they released the album Totally Wild. It scored an underground club hit with the single “Wild Thang” in 2004. In 2006, Joan Faulkner began performing with Dynelle Rhodes and often substituting for Arthur. In 2008, the Weather Girls released a single “Break You”, which topped the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart.

Martha Wash performed at the opening ceremony of the OutGames in Montreal in July 2006. She also performed at numerous Human Rights Campaign events in the U.S.A. In 2008, she was a featured vocalist on the number-one dance hit “Keep Your Body Working” by Tony Moran.

On September 14, 2014, Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical, a Broadway musical about Slyvester, debuted in New York City. Armstead’s likeness was featured in the production and she was portrayed by actress Anastacia McCleskey.

June 30, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
“Disco Diva Izora Armstead Dies,” Billboard, September 17, 2004.
George Wayne. “Celebs, Jokes, and Rock ’n’ Roll!,” Vanity Fair, October 1, 2009.
Patrick Garvin, “Cover Songs Uncovered: “It’s Raining Men” Pop Culture Experiment, June 13, 2013.
Joe Lynch, Stephen Daw, and Hannah Dailey, “70 Top LGBTQ+ Anthems of All Time,” Billboard, June 6, 2024.
Sheila Rule, “Paul Jabara, 44, Singer and Disco Songwriter is Dead,” New York Times, October 2, 1992.
Joe Levy, “Paul Shaffer Reflects on 33 Years of ‘Late Night,’ Life After Letterman and His 5 Favorite Musical Moments,” Billboard, May 15, 2015.

CKGM 980-AM Montreal, Top Ten | March 24, 1983