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Ocean Rain

1984 studio album by Echo & the Bunnymen

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ587813 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ocean Rain is the fourth studio album by the English post-punk band Echo & the Bunnymen. It was released on 4 May 1984 by Korova and reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, number 87 on the United States Billboard 200, number 41 on the Canadian RPM 100 Albums and number 22 on the Swedish chart. Since 1984 the album has been certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry. Ocean Rain includes the singles "The Killing Moon", "Silver" and "Seven Seas".

The band wrote the songs for the new album in 1983. In early 1984 they recorded most of the album in Paris using a 35-piece orchestra, with other sessions taking place in Bath and Liverpool. Receiving mixed reviews upon release but retrospectively praised, the album was originally released as an LP and a cassette in May 1984 before it was reissued on CD in August. The album was reissued on CD in 2003, along with the other four of the band's first five studio albums, having been remastered and expanded before again being reissued in 2008 with a live bonus disc. The artwork for the album was designed by Martyn Atkins and the photography was by Brian Griffin. Echo & the Bunnymen played a number of concerts in 2008 where they performed Ocean Rain in full and with the backing of an orchestra.

Editorial summary

“Ocean Rain” enters the record as 1984 studio album by Echo & the Bunnymen. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ocean, Rain and studio can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1984, 1983, 2003, 2008—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1984-05-04. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Ocean, Rain and studio.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Ocean Rain” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Ocean, Rain and studio provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q587813. Authority coordinates are 50.473, -4.556. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1984, 1983, 2003 and 2008.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ocean Rain”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ocean Rain primary sources, Ocean Rain archive and Ocean research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ocean Rain”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ocean Rain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.