44 Songs About Clouds and the Sky

Glancing Skyward

What do you see when you cast a glance skyward? The answer may depend on whether you

• lean creative (e.g., poets, artists)
• need to make accurate predictions (e.g., meteorologists and astronomers)
• rely on the skies for your livelihood (e.g., pilots and farmers) and/or
• how preoccupied you are by your internal thoughts (e.g., lovers, daydreamers, and mourners).

Whereas one person may perceive big lumpy pillows of shapeshifting cotton dotting Earth's azure blanket, the next could take a more scientific approach. Perhaps they see nothing more than water and ice droplets suspended in the atmosphere.

Clouds and the sky have our long captured human attention. Regardless of whether your mind is cloudy, you have pie in the sky ideas, or you have your head in the clouds, celebrate the magic above us with a playlist of pop, rock, and country tunes on the subject. We have a long list to start you out.

1. "Get Off of My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones

The only problem with achieving a chart-topping, worldwide hit single is repeating your success. The pressure can be immense as everyone wants to know what's next.

In June 1965, The Rolling Stones hit it big with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," but instead of being able to take some time to enjoy their first number one chart-topper, the band was hounded with inquiries regarding when they would release follow-up material. Three months later, this song was their response. It's the band's way of flipping off the music establishment, telling those who were pressuring them to give it a rest.

2. "A Sky Full of Stars" by Coldplay

This 2014 electronic dance hit features a narrator professing unconditional love using the symbolism of an expansive sky. The narrator's sweetheart is a sky full of bright stars. They represent the purity of her spirit, and light his path forward.

3. "Clouds" by Zach Sobiech

Zach Sobiech was a singer-songwriter from Minnesota who was only 14 years old when he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a deadly bone cancer. After living with the disease for several years, doctors informed him when he was a high school senior that his cancer was terminal. He had less than a year to live.

This 2012 indie-pop tune was one of the songs that Sobriech wrote to say farewell to loved ones. It describes how his end is near and soon he'll be watching from the clouds. After going viral on YouTube and entering the Billboard Top 40, "Clouds" inspired a 2020 Disney biographic film of the same name.

4. "Midnight Sky" by Miley Cyrus

Forget that provocateur Miley Cyrus is about as classy as a sewer rat because she just doesn't care. In this globally popular disco-tinged ditty from 2020, the former Disney darling sings about her personal liberation and evolution. Cyrus divorced Australian actor Liam Hemsworth after less than eight months of marriage, although the couple had dated on and off for the better part of a decade.

In the song, Cyrus declares her independence. She doesn't belong to anyone and was born to seek her personal freedom in a lofty, sky-high realm of her own making:

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The midnight sky is the road I'm takin'
Head high up in the clouds.

5. "Skyfall" by Adele

Adele released this 2012 pop number as a theme song for the James Bond movie of the same name. Tinged with elements of jazz, her tune describes death and rebirth. The fallen sky signifies that the narrator expects to face any number of situations together with her ally. It is them standing tall against the world. Co-written by Adele, "Skyfall" impressively won her an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award. This is one more reason why Adele is Wonder Woman.

6. "Just a Cloud" by Lusine

With its recurring lyrics, this 2017 ambient song reflects the anxiety that is rampant in our culture today. One often seeks soothing and solace by disappearing unnoticed into a nebulous background, just as the narrator wishes they could do:

I wish that I was just a cloud
In the sky of the light
I wish that I was just a cloud
Take less shape and disappear.

The song's warped electronica adds successive layers of repetitive elements to its sound: finger snaps, claps, computer blips, and even a laser gun thingy towards the end, before mellowing back down to silence. Perhaps finally the narrator has taken shape as a cloud and evaporated after all?

7. "Dancing in the Sky" by Dani and Lizzy

If you're like me, you probably ponder what your lost loved ones are doing in the great beyond. Have they found peace? Do they know they are loved and missed?

Following the deaths of several people they knew, Canadian twins Dani and Lizzy posted this heartfelt song on YouTube in 2013, and it immediately grew legs, going viral. The song succinctly conveys grief's complicated mixture of loss and hope.

The narrator misses her loved one and asks them a series of rhetorical questions about whether they are happy, free, and devoid of pain and fear in heaven. Knowing that the sun shines gently on their face in heaven brings her comfort, and she hopes that they are dancing in the sky and singing with the angels.

8. "Wake Up in the Sky" by Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars and Kodak Black

Pop superstar Bruno Mars took a more active interest in hip hop a few years ago, and songs like this 2018 collaboration are the result. Now his head is up in the clouds. With a tongue-in-cheek air, the song highlights the playboy lifestyle and having a decadently good time.

What's mostly up in the sky in this ditty are the massive egos of the famous song narrators who identify themselves by name throughout the track. They describe poverty-to-riches success and the love of luxury that they have become accustomed to. Additionally, as the rappers brag about being "super fly," they banter about their fast-paced life that includes performance-enhancing drugs like Adderall, an abundance of booze, and loose women. Bruno, come back down to Earth!

9. "Clouds" by Imagine Dragons

Recurring threads of depression and anxiety appear throughout rock band Imagine Dragons' song catalog, in addition to the theme of rejection and the struggle for personal acceptance. This 2009 song is a vivid example, and they modified the song several times.

Being raised in a strict Mormon environment created lingering issues for the band's lead singer, Dan Reynolds, and it spills over into the song lyrics. The dejected narrator describes a world of missed opportunities, disappointments, and confusion. He looks around him and sees that everyone is making the best they can out of a miserable situation, but really, it's all pointless. The man doesn't know whether he wants to live or die, and as he remarks, "We're sinking to the sky," he isn't certain which way is up or down.

10. "King of the Clouds" by Panic! At the Disco

If you find the meaning of this 2018 alt-rock song to be a little cloudy, there's a good reason for it. The tune was completed on the day the album was due, with lyrics based on a doped-up writing session Brandon Urie had the week before wherein he spouted "verbal vomit" about Carl Sagan, the multiverse, and inter-dimensional travel. Little did Urie know that his songwriting partner was writing down his ramblings while Urie was taking tokes. The completed song describes getting lost high in the clouds where the narrator flies high and blisses out.

11. "Blue Clear Sky" by George Strait

If your quest for a romantic soulmate has left you stubbornly single, perhaps you've considered giving up on love. But wait. Don't give up and start hoarding cats into your old age just yet. According to this 1996 country hit, it's at this low point when a love match often takes place.

Addressing a lonely, love-hungry friend, the song narrator tells him that just as he's about to throw in the towel, a soulmate will surprise him by dropping out of the blue clear sky and into his life. Then he will go from a solitary bachelor to a man shopping for engagement rings. Hope springs eternal! (But there's nothing wrong with cats.)

12. "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato could easily choose the path of the victim. At such a young age, she has faced sexual assault, mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse, an eating disorder, and self-harm (cutting). However, the former Disney princess recenters herself, reaffirming her identity, by claiming this 2011 self-empowerment anthem as her own.

The pop ballad depicts the skies as "crying" as a partner tries to tear her down. However, she is the high-rise building that valiantly fights back, determined to stand her ground. If she is demolished, she is determined to rise again like a bold powerful skyscraper that leaps up towards the clouds.

13. "Mr. Blue Sky" by Electric Light Orchestra

This effervescent 1978 pop tune exudes pure joy that rain has ended, the sun is out again, and the blue sky has returned overhead. The narrator is so tickled about the change in weather that he addresses the blue sky as if it were a much-loved person, asking where it was hiding and why it stayed gone for so long. The jubilant tune has become a signature song for ELO and has been used in movies, tv shows, and commercials, as well as for major sporting events (e.g., 2012 Summer Olympics).

14. "The Sky Is a Neighborhood" by Foo Fighters

This trippin' rock song from 2017 was inspired by frontman Dave Grohl's hobby of stargazing as well as astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson's video, The Most Astounding Fact. Both Tyson's video and this song are a thinking man's commentary on the interconnected cosmic oneness that humans share with the galaxy.

15. "Scar on the Sky" by Chris Connell

A hazy melancholy clouds the worldview of the narrator in this 2007 rock track that is sheer poetry. Alluding to depression, the sad narrator reaches out to a kindred spirit who understands his loneliness because they experience it too. Together they find a connection in spending time together, with the narrator hoping that his friend might save him. However, ultimately we can only save ourselves. Singer Chris Cornell struggled with his mental health for many years before dying by suicide in 2017.

16. "Amarillo Sky" by Jason Aldean

Between the financial pressures and the long workdays, the farming life isn't easy, so this 2006 country song pays tribute to those who till the fields, harvest the crops, and feed the nation. By day, the nameless Texas farmer in this song works the land that was passed down from his father and grandfather, and each night he prays that his dreams don't run dry underneath an Amarillo sky.