"The Whole of the Moon"

The Waterboys -"The Whole of the Moon" (1985)

It hit number thirty in 1985, then in typical English fashion it got a re-release and hit number three ix years later.


A long lived English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish band active during my elementary, middle and early high school years that I have never even vaguely heard of or heard anything by ever. Their typical genre is a Celtic inspired folk rock, lots of interesting drums, fiddle and acoustic guitars and other atypical stringed instruments. This song however is more straight ahead 80's keyboard driven rock, though it does have some fiddle. The wildly different instrumentation is the trumpet calls back and forth, and then adding electric harpsichord and saxophone we've got a mini-orchestra going on and that's a pretty interesting thing.

The subject of the song has been a question of a lot of speculation, a girlfriend, a writer or musician that was particularly inspiring? Whatever the answer (probably a mix of all of these things according to interviews) it's a sort of thank you, while admitting that the singer still doesn't appreciate and notice everything around him, it is the subject that makes him a better person.