“The Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys

Mike Scott wrote "The Whole of the Moon" by himself, produced it himself, and set it on This Is the Sea, the Waterboys' third album, in 1985. It's the Scottish band at their most sky-scraping, a song that doesn't so much build as climb, with Scott singing like a man who has just seen something he can barely describe and has to tell somebody right now.

Scott plays the guitar and piano, Karl Wallinger stacks up synthesizers and bass synth and sings backup with Max Edie, Chris Whitten drives the drums and Martin Ditcham adds percussion. Then the horns go off like fireworks, Roddy Lorimer on trumpet and Anthony Thistlethwaite on saxophone. Mick Glossop mixed it. As for who the song is actually about, people have been guessing ever since.

The first time around it barely dented the charts, though Australia took it to number 12. It came back in March 1991 and went to number three in Britain, and in 1992 it won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. It has grown into the Waterboys' best-known and most successful song, and it has never dropped out of their live shows.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.