The Waterboys: An Appreciation

My 8 favorite songs

I was a bit late hearing the Waterboys. I was almost 26, back in Summer 1991, a while after their heyday, when I first listened to them. I became a fan the instant I heard my first Waterboys C.D. and I’ve been listening to them for 33 years since.

A British, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folk rock band formed in 1983, the Waterboys were an epic band and, in my view, the most underrated band of all time. They produced one brilliant masterpiece after another — songs of pure genius. The tunes are, in and of themselves, affirmations of life on a deep existential level. And Mike Scott was a superb poet — one of the best lyricists of all time.

Here are my eight favorite songs by the Waterboys (each with a link to a YouTube video of the song):

8. “The Big Music”

A magnificent hymn. Scott sings about a spiritual experience in which he drowned in the Big Sea and encountered the Big Sky.  Something pure called his name and now he’s left his shadows behind and been lifted up to become what he really can be. 

7. “Spirit”

Another hymn with great lyrics.  Scott sings about the part of our self that never stays tethered, tires, or surrenders but always flies free.  The part of our self that doesn’t just dream and seem but that fully lives and is more than it seems.  He calls us to let our spirit lift off the ground and soar. 

6. “Don’t Bang the Drum”

First there’s the trumpet intro – with a real kick to it, an intro to die for, one of the best song intros ever. The song’s a high-energy song with a message:  Each of us is standing in this special, fabulous place where our ancestors stood.  What dream and song and action is the world going to get from us?  Something true? Something historic? This exhilarating anthem takes us to a more expansive place, a place of sacred power, a place where we are free — free from what limits us, free of our primate nature, free to let our inmost and truest self emerge, free to rise to our full potential.

5. “This Is the Sea”

This song wakes me up, stirs me, brings me feel fully alive, etches its surging energy right into my soul, and takes me to another level of inner strength and light. We’re invited to get on a free train, while there’s still enough time, and leave our tethered, limited, soulless self behind.  We’re invited into a space where all that’s good in the human soul is affirmed. It’s a hymn of personal transformation that carries us back to our Source.

4. “The Pan Within”

This is an extraordinary song.  What passion for life!  It’s hypnotic, magical, powerful, and a bit haunting as it calls us to swing our hips, let our head spin loosely, close our eyes, taste the wind, breath slowly, and take the inward journey that can unite us all.  As our souls stir and awaken and begin to race, we can join on the sanctifying path of all mystics and seekers and can become infused with spiritual treasures.

3. “Church Not Made of Hands”

I find this song glorious and sublime — a warm, upbeat, and timeless work of genius.  It’s a spectacular anthem for all spiritual seekers, showing us how the Spirit is moving among all people., bringing happiness and joy to our souls.  

2. “Red Army Blues”

The greatest storytelling I’ve ever encountered in a song. Scott takes us into the heart of the experience of a 17-year-old Russian boy full of aspirations and patriotism. He successfully fights the Nazis in World War II. But for some reason that defies logic, the paranoid Soviet dictator Josef Stalin decides that these soldiers might be a threat to his regime. The young man’s train home is diverted instead to a Siberian labor camp, where he spends years just struggling to survive.

The tragedy conveyed in the song has been highly impactful for me. This song opened my mind and heart to those who suffered in the Gulag system, a subject I am currently writing about, all these years later, in my fourth novel.

1. “The Whole of the Moon”

This song is spectacular and I never tire of listening to it.

Scott sings about his wandering and wondering and guessing, walking through a rain-dirty valley, seeing things in flashes, trying and sighing and just speaking about things that leave him dumbfounded.  He laments that he still feels grounded, seeing only the crescent of the moon.

While so aware of his own limitations, he spends time with a visionary who is carrying a torch, seeing the Plan, knowing for sure, stretching for the stars, holding a rainbow in his hands, sailing with the wind at his back, and blazing his trail.  This visionary man sees “every precious dream and vision underneath the stars”. He sees the whole of the moon.