Let It Rain

Nail penned this lead single for his second album with Jonathan Singleton, who also wrote the Missouri native's breakout tune "Red Light." The song features backing vocals from Nashville singer-songwriter Sarah Buxton.

Nail married his longtime girlfriend Catherine Werne on June 6, 2009 and he admitted to The Boot that since his wedding day, his happy marriage has left him struggling somewhat to write sad songs. He explained: "Prior to getting married, most of my relationships ended sort of sour. I was never short of material to dive back into. Now I'm happily married and in a real positive place, and when it came time to start writing for [my album], I was like, 'Man, I don't have any miserable moments to pull from now. I think I tapped that well dry.'I can't remember who came up with the phrase 'Let it Rain.' Jonathan came in with this really cool guitar groove. It was unlike anything I had ever written and I just loved it. It's not a bona fide tempo song but with the guitar, the way it moves, it moves like a tempo song.

We started talking about [the phrase] 'Let it Rain' and a scene in the Zach Braff movie, the Last Kiss.' Zach's engaged and meets this young girl, they had their moment and [then he has] mental anguish. He tells [his pregnant fiancée] about it. I thought the scene at the end of the movie was one of the most unique I had seen. The fiancée had thrown him out of the house and his future father-in-law said, 'You have to wait until she's ready: she may never be ready.'He goes home and sits on front steps. Days go by and the weather gets bad. He sleeps on the steps. At the end of the movie, there's no dialogue. You see [his fiancée] crack the door open and you don't know if she opens it up and throws all his stuff out, you don't know if she let's him in, you don't know if they have a talk.

It's a really powerful scene and I just remember trying to wrap my head around that, to describe how there can be years of good but you can't hide one night that you forgot to wear a ring. Your life can be going just perfectly and everything's fine and one little mistake, can throw the wrench of all wrenches into it. I always try to put my mind around something and put myself into it. That's what I did [in writing this song]. I thought about what I would do and how I would feel."

The song's music video was inspired by the final scene of the film, The Last Kiss. Nail initially didn't plan on appearing in the clip. "At first, I was not planning on being in the video in any way, shape or form," he recalled to The Boot. "Then the director Stephen Shepherd came to me and said, 'Man, if you're going to portray a jerk, to really get the significance, you gotta power up and do it yourself.'"Once Nail decided to appear in the video himself, he had to tell his wife the clip was going to contain a half-naked girl. "I went home that night and laid out the parameters to my wife, and she sat there very quietly," he explained. "I told her, 'We're going to have some stipulations.' I had planned on not having any sort of interaction with the girl, out of respect for my wife, and I felt that made it intriguing. Here's this guy who's so disgusted by what he did that he doesn't even want to look at her, see her, smell her or have any contact whatsoever. It's that awkward three minutes where she's trying to gather her stuff and get out the door without making him feel any worse."
Nail told The Boot about the shot of a ring and wallet on the nightstand. "That was actually my ring and my wallet," he laughed. "I credit Stephen for being a great director and seeing my vision. I wanted to make it as awful as possible. There's only one way to really tell a story like that and that's to tell it in the most brutal way, and we accomplished that."