Who is ‘The Whole of the Moon’ by The Waterboys about?
No one will ever truly know what makes a song come back around. Some take a while to gain momentum and only become popular much later, tapping into the inexplicable allure of cultural poignancy that grasps some tracks but not others. This was the case with The Waterboys’ ‘The Whole of the Moon’, their most well-known hit that started as nothing more than scribbled attempts at songwriting on the back of an envelope.
There’s a strange poignancy in considering the inception of some of music’s biggest songs. In the moment, ideas for lyrics or melodies likely feel like small sparks—seeds of inspiration that seem insignificant and unpredictable in their potential—but these moments suddenly take on new meaning when seen as part of the larger story of how such monumental compositions came to be.
One night under the New York sky, Mike Scott’s girlfriend asked him if it was challenging to write a song. He immediately pulled out an old envelope and wrote what he saw when he looked up, “I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon”. He later added more in his hotel room and, upon his return to London, filled it with more explosive romance than most songs can contain within five minutes.
Over the years, however, the song’s meaning has been discussed at length, with many claiming it to have been written about a famous figure, namely someone like Nikki Sudden, Syd Barrett, Jimi Hendrix, or Prince. The speculation about Sudden stemmed from a comment claiming it to have been about him, though people felt less inclined to believe that against the suspicion that the real muse was, in fact, the ‘Purple One’.
Who was ‘The Whole of the Moon’ about?
This also came from a note Scott allegedly wrote that read, “For Prince, U saw the whole of the moon”. It also wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, considering how the song places its subject on a pedestal, claiming they see things others can’t, often detecting beauty and flaws in a more grandiose way than any other human could possibly dream of.
However, Scott has repeatedly denied this, instead explaining that it stemmed from the sense of wonderment he felt throughout his life, and how these enlightening moments hit when he suddenly remembers the bigger picture. As he later explained: “It’s not a specific person. It’s more a type. The point of the song was to illustrate how much more there could be to learn than we had ever guessed. And so, I used that format of songwriting, as if addressing a more knowledgeable or wise being.”
As for the Prince comparisons, the song isn’t entirely separate from the singer. In fact, Scott’s previous note wasn’t revealing the song’s contextual inspiration; rather, it indicated the type of sonic atmosphere he was striving for, with a Prince-esque sound that aligned with its visceral tone. “I wrote the greeting because Karl Wallinger [keyboards] and I thought a lot about Prince when we created the sound of the record, in Livingstone studios in north London,” he told The Guardian.
“When we wrote and recorded the song, we wanted it to sound just like Prince,” he explained elsewhere to Number One. “His records are really positive, and that’s something I like very much.” And while he also admitted that the song was about “someone like CS Lewis” or someone who appears “like a comet, blazing your trail”, the main message centres on gazing upon unexpected truths, when no one else sees them.
