The Whole of the Moon

Mike Scott wrote and produced it. It was recorded in May 1985 at Livingston in London and Amazon in Liverpool, with Scott on vocals, piano and guitar, Chris Whitten on drums, Anthony Thistlethwaite on saxophone, Karl Wallinger on synthesizer, Roddy Lorimer on trumpet and Mick Glossop mixing. Scott says it began as a scribble on the back of an envelope on a wintry New York street; Lorimer arranged antiphonal trumpets, and Scott wanted an impact like the flugelhorns on the Beatles' "Penny Lane". Scott has said it is not specifically about anyone, and the official FAQ calls the subject a composite of many people, including C. S. Lewis. He said he could not have written it without Mark Helprin's novel Winter's Tale.

The single came out on October 14, 1985 with "Medicine Jack" on the B-side and reached 26 in the UK (28 by the album page). A re-release on March 25, 1991, alongside The Best of the Waterboys 81-90, reached three in the UK and two in Ireland, and it is two-times platinum in the UK. It won an Ivor Novello award for best song musically and lyrically, in 1991 or 1992 depending on the source. The video, directed by Meiert Avis at the Lyceum Theatre in November 1985, has Scott singing live over an amended record. Scott refused to mime on Top of the Pops. Covers include Jennifer Warnes (1992), Mandy Moore (2003), Frightened Rabbit, the Killers (2018) and Fiona Apple (2019). Prince played it at Ronnie Scott's in 2014 and at Paisley Park in 2015, and U2 used it as walk-up music on the Joshua Tree tours. We do not know which version our upload, a lyric video, carries.