Do you think it’s hard to write a song? For most songwriters, it’s a craft that takes decades to refine. For Mike Scott of The Waterboys, it apparently doesn’t take much effort. He wrote his biggest hit, “The Whole of the Moon,” in response to his girlfriend asking if it was easy to write songs. He told her “Yes it is!” and proved it by coming up with the refrain I saw the crescent / You saw the whole of the moon on the spot.
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Though that line was an impromptu response, Scott imbued “The Whole of the Moon” with a deliberate message. It’s clear from the lyrics for the lead single of The Waterboys’ 1985 album This Is the Sea that Scott is addressing someone with more knowledge and perspective than him. He actually provided listeners with a hint as to the subject’s identity, but based on his own explanations for the song’s meaning, it’s one we shouldn’t take too seriously.
Was It About Prince?
Scott appeared to have taken any mystery over the song’s inspiration when he included the following message on the record’s label: “For Prince, U saw the whole of the moon.” However, Scott debunked that explanation, telling The Guardian in 2020 that he was referring to the musical (rather than lyrical) inspiration that Prince provided him and bandmate Karl Wallinger when they were working on “The Whole of the Moon.” The synth line that pops into the song after Scott sings I saw the crescent for the first time—yep, that’s a nod to “1999.”
Other theories abound as to the visionary Scott sings about in “The Whole of the Moon,” including one pinpointing Nikki Sudden, the vocalist and guitarist from the English punk band Swell Maps. On his website, Sudden wrote that Scott told Max Edie, who provided backing vocals for the song, that the song was about him. Scott denied that “The Whole of the Moon” was about Sudden in his Guardian interview.
So Who, Then, Is the Song About?
Scott has said “The Whole of the Moon” is not about a particular person, but rather a category of people. He told Songfacts the lyrics came from his realization that “there was so much more to learn than I’d ever been hinted at in the culture I’d grown up in. I had a strong sense of wonderment about that, and I realized there are people who had vastly more information in their imaginations and experience than I had.”
In the first chorus, the refrain is preceded by the line And you know how it feels / To reach too high / Too far, too soon, and this alludes to those who have a unique inspiration but who die or burn out at a young age. Scott cited Jimi Hendrix and Syd Barrett as exemplars of this type of visionary. While “The Whole of the Moon” is about anyone with a special level of insight and perspective, that group includes those whose brilliance we only got to know for a short time.
“You Just Stayed in Your Room”
Most of “The Whole of the Moon” follows the pattern set by the refrain, contrasting some limited power that Scott possesses against the much greater abilities of those he admires. The first verse sticks to this format but also adds an extra element.
I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
In the first four lines, Scott establishes that he is no match for those who have greater powers of perception and imagination. In the next two lines, he intimates that the people of whom he sings don’t need to search for their spiritual riches—they can receive them without even leaving their rooms.
The Impact of “The Whole of the Moon”
“The Whole of the Moon” wasn’t a huge hit at the time of its release, but it put The Waterboys on the radar of many music fans. It was their first Top 20 entry on the singles charts in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. It did not register on any Billboard chart until spending a week on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Digital Song Sales charts in November 2019. (The sudden chart activity may have been catalyzed by Fiona Apple’s cover of the song appearing in the finale of the Showtime series The Affair.) “The Whole of the Moon” did make it to No. 48 on Radio & Records’ AOR Tracks chart in December 1985.
How does a song go from being a peripheral entry on album-oriented rock stations’ playlists to having more than 138 million streams on Spotify nearly four decades later? Having some high-profile artists cover it hasn’t hurt, and it’s not just Apple’s version of “The Whole of the Moon” that has kept it in the cultural conversation. Bleachers, Jennifer Warnes, and Mandy Moore are among the artists who have released their own recording of the song. The Killers covered “The Whole of the Moon” at the 2018 TRNSMT Festival in Scott’s native Scotland. U2 used a recording of the Waterboys’ original version to lead into their live set openers on their 2017 and 2019 tours.
And, yes, Prince covered “The Whole of the Moon” as well. In his funky live rendition, he changed the perspective of the lyrics so that he was the one who “saw the whole of the moon.” Prince also changed the line from the second verse With a torch in your pocket / And the wind at your heels to With a lion in my pocket / And the wind in my heels, referencing a lyric from “1999.”
When you write a song that compels Prince to cover it and for U2 to hype up their crowd with it, you’ve clearly created something great. That might seem like a tremendous feat, but for Scott it was easy. He may have even come up with its most memorable line without having to leave his room.
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Photo by Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images
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