Why the Waterboys should have been bigger than U2
There are shocks aplenty in the disturbing new Netflix hit Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen – but the biggest twist of all is that the horror series has introduced Gen Z to the fiddle‑fuelled delights of the Waterboys.
The band's frontman, Mike Scott, was last heard celebrating the legacy of Hollywood iconoclast Dennis Hopper on the 2025 concept album, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper . Now, he has blown up on TikTok, following the use of the Waterboys' 1988 song We Will Not Be Lovers over the end credits of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen . Created by Stranger Things masterminds the Duffer brothers, the series's nostalgic soundtrack is a savvy way of introducing vintage music to a younger generation (as the duo did on Stranger Things with the inclusion of songs by Tiffany and Kate Bush).
Thus, Scott now finds his song providing the soundtrack to thousands of "get ready with me" videos and nostalgic photograph collages on social media, each accompanied by captions from new teenage fans declaring the Waterboys "the best band ever!!". We Will Not Be Lovers has entered the band's top three most-streamed songs on Spotify; TikTok videos tagged "the Waterboys" have been viewed more than a million times.
There is an argument that Scott, the gnarled rocker who was born in Edinburgh and has lived in Dublin for decades, is finally taking his rightful place among the musical A list and that, had things worked out differently for the Waterboys, they could – and should – have been up there with U2 and Simple Minds as the face and voice of super-sized 1980s stadium rock.
There is a case, in fact, that Scott actually beat his peers to the punch. While he is most celebrated today for his extraordinary folk‑infused 1988 album Fisherman's Blues – We Will Not Be Lovers is track two – his real breakthrough came three years previously with This Is the Sea . That LP represented the pinnacle of his vision of songs that were larger than mountains and wider than the sunset. Or, as he called it, "The Big Music".
The most moving expression of that idea was The Whole of the Moon – a beautiful pop song that blazed like a meteorite amid the plastic pop landscape of the mid-Eighties. The Whole of the Moon has had a huge afterlife, with more than 211 million streams on Spotify and counting, though at the time of release it barely grazed the top 30. Even in 1985 the sense was that, much as U2 were only getting started with the similarly epic Pride (In the Name of Love) , The Whole of the Moon had put Scott on the first rung to superstardom.
He took such chatter as a compliment and was aware of the U2 comparisons. His label and management encouraged the Waterboys to go farther in that radio-friendly direction – as U2 did when they trumped 1984's supersized The Unforgettable Fire with the even more gargantuan The Joshua Tree in 1987, making breaking America look like the easiest thing in the world.
The difference is that Scott had a streak of bloody‑mindedness that invariably led him down the road less travelled. What would be the precise opposite of the catchy stadium rock of The Whole of the Moon ? How about going to Spiddal in Galway and recording a folk‑fusion album working with a collective of Irish traditional musicians? Nobody could have seen it coming. Which is why Scott did it.
"I'm happy if more people are hearing Waterboys records. I could see in the Eighties that we had the same agents as U2, a company called Wasted Talent in London. They were pushing us in the same way," he told me last year. "They thought we were the next big thing who would follow that path. It wouldn't work for us because I wanted the music to change. I wasn't happy making the same music. Now, I'm not saying U2 made the same music. But their changes were more incremental. My changes were sharp, 180‑degree turns."
'I wanted the music to change. I wasn't happy making the same music': Mike Scott pictured in 1984 - Peter Noble/Redferns
It has to be remembered that Irish folk was not nearly as voguish in the Eighties as it is today . This was not the era of "mutant folkies" Lankum making the Mercury Prize shortlist or Glastonbury-approved Irish language rappers Kneecap playing a bodhrán on stage. In 1982, Irish folk duo Foster and Allen were pressured into dressing as leprechauns when they went on Top of the Pops . That was the status of Irish folk in the wider world: it was seen as the musical equivalent of a bowl of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal or a postcard of a donkey staring over a stone wall.
But Scott had found a new muse out in the bleak majesty of Connemara – the fiddle playing of Dubliner Steve Wickham. Here was another U2 connection. Wickham had grown up not far from the band's guitarist the Edge in Dublin, and once approached him at a bus stop to suggest they collaborate. A few days later, the Edge called around to Wickham's house (his father answered the door) and invited him to cameo on what would become future U2 anthem Sunday Bloody Sunday .
Wickham's fiddle is all over Fisherman's Blues , contributing to the record's beautifully mournful quality. Rave reviews followed. Scott, for once, played the game to an extent, producing a sound‑alike follow‑up in 1990's Room To Roam , largely remembered today for the Paul McCartney‑esque ballad A Man Is in Love .
Fiddle-player Steve Wickham and Scott on stage in 2007: Wickham had previously collaborated with U2 - Hayley Madden/Redferns
Any ambitions he might have had to do a U2 and build on his success were sabotaged when the band fell apart immediately afterwards. By the time it came to tour Room to Roam , the Celtic‑infused line‑up of the Waterboys had broken up, and Scott went on the road fronting a bluesier version of the group. His audience wanted one thing – he was giving them the very opposite.
Scott reinvented the Waterboys all over again with 1993's Dream Harder and the hit Glastonbury Song – a psychedelic nugget reminiscent of early Pink Floyd that held its own at a time when grunge and REM were conquering all. In fact, Scott feels he can take some credit for the latter's metamorphosis into chart‑topping mandolin bashers circa Losing My Religion . He would recall a 1989 residency at the Olympia in Dublin, which REM attended, feeling they took tips from his fusion of rock and folk.
"I think we had an influence on other bands that maybe gets overlooked or doesn't get mentioned," he told Irish music magazine Hot Press in 2000. "I remember REM coming to see us at the Olympia; we did that four-night residency in 89, and we had all these guests coming on stage. And then I read an interview with REM a year or six months later, and they were talking about, 'Oh we're gonna have mandolins and we're gonna have guests on stage and it's gonna be a lot less formal,' and I thought to myself, 'The boys were at our gig in the Olympia!'"
Back together: Wickham and Scott on Glastonbury's Pyramid stage in 2015 - Jim Dyson/Getty Images
He continued to go his own way through the Nineties, as the Waterboys imploded yet again and he (somewhat reluctantly) launched a solo career. By this point, U2 were the biggest band in the world, giving stadium rock a reboot with the neon overload that was the ZooTV tour. Scott, by contrast, was without a manager and steering his career himself.
Feeling his batteries needed recharging, he lived four years at the Findhorn spiritual community in the Scottish Highlands – an experience he has described as like "being accompanied by an angel". Emerging reinvigorated and eager to seek out old friends, he reunited with Wickham, released a series of well‑regarded albums and performed material from Fisherman's Blues live in its originally folky form. He will honour that legacy again this year with a Fisherman's Blues "Revue" Tour, starting in Glasgow's Hydro Arena in August.
At quieter moments, does Scott look out the window of his home in Dublin and wonder if he could have been as big as Bono, hobnobbing with world leaders in his sprawling mansion down the coastline? As the response among Gen Z-ers to We Will Not Be Lovers shows, the Waterboys certainly had the potential to be as big as any of their windswept Eighties contemporaries.
But to paraphrase the band's 2000 album A Rock in the Weary Land , Scott has always been a stone alone, determined to roll his own way, come what may.
