Mike Scott of The Waterboys is arguably one of the great lyricists on the more thoughtful, introspective side of rock, and The Whole Of The Moon is almost certainly his signature song.
Scott’s parable about someone who rises too far too fast only to fall spectacularly has an almost medieval grandiosity to its vivid imagery and in the trumpets baying as if from the top of a castle announcing the arrival of the king. Its message is clear — pure genius and restless ambition can’t always save you from the fatal flaw of being in over your head.
![The Waterboys - The Whole of the Moon [Official HD Remastered Video]](https://stevepafford.com/core/cache/flying-press/b539e27785a47796f49c614d446105af.jpg)
The other side of the dynamic between the song’s two figures is the narrator’s regret about missed opportunities, and a life lived in the shadow of someone who followed their dreams to incredible heights only to see them collapse.
As Scott later clarified on a Waterboys forum: “The Whole Of The Moon is about someone like CS Lewis, who seemed to see so much and explore issues much more deeply than most people, or it could be about a Jimi Hendrix-type person who comes “like a comet, blazing your trail” and is gone too soon, but it’s not specifically about anyone.”
In other interviews, he has similarly described how Prince was just one of the rare pantheon of artists who have looked at creativity through expanded horizons. Indeed, with a topline lifted from the Purple One‘s Paisley Park and trumpet sections inspired by the flugelhorns of The Beatles‘ Penny Lane (which Scott described poetically as sounding “like sunlight bursting through clouds”), the track is an elegy to the exultant power of art and the new eyes it can inspire you to view the world with.
The scintillating climax at around 3:54, when a cannon explodes in the midst of the Gaelic-inflected layers of vocals, guitars, and brass, is genuinely stirring. The Whole Of The Moon — if you didn’t know, it’s from the Waterboys’ landmark album This Is the Sea — reached No. 26 in the UK upon its initial single release.
Alas, it was reissued five years later and rocketed to third place, by far the band’s highest chart appearance.
To date, at least. Stranger things have happened.
Steve Pafford
