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Mike Scott is the most prolific and greatest songwriter in rock in he last 40 years

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He is

1

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    • This may be nitpicking and I’m a big fan of Mike Scott from the first albums but Red Army Blues is on the second album A Pagan Place.

      I thought he tailed off after Dream Harder but has continued to produce some really good songs over the years. I’ve listened to the most recent stuff but haven’t been gripped.

      In his defence I will say that they have always been a phenomenal live band especially with Steve Wickham.

      I’m sure I’ve told the story on here before of meeting him in Galway City in 1986 when he was in the process of relocating to Ireland. I was at a Hothouse Flowers gig in the Warwick and this person caught my eye walking past. I said to my friend that I thought it was yer man from the Waterboys and we discussed the unlikely chances of him being there as they were a Scottish band. The next time he walked past I collared him and he spent 20 minutes chatting to us, telling me the chords to songs I was having trouble learning and giving us the heads up about an unannounced gig they were doing the next day in Salthill – which was short but very enjoyable.

      Anyway, about a year later my sister met him in Dublin at some gig or other and she mentioned the above encounter. He asked her how my feet were as I had been crippled with ingrown toenails at the time I met him. Gross as it was, it was such a lift to think that I had registered with probably my favourite artist at the time. Oddly enough I’ve passed him a number of times in Dublin and when I worked in Richmond upon Thames but he always seemed so deep in thought that it seemed wrong to impose. I love that he’s still a proper rock’n’roll star who doesn’t just plough a comfortable furrow.

      His book was really enjoyable too.

  4. Come on, man. Really? How? Beyond Fisherman’s Blues ( which he knows is best work) I hear only a committed song-writer exploring ideas that have been well-traversed. I kept on hoping that I would hear lightning strike a second time but I never did. But, on your extraordinary claim, today I will play one of his albums that I have never heard and I’ll see what happens. I can’t see how he even comes close to Tweedy.

    • I might carry out a similar exercise. I disliked The Waterboys intensely in the 1980s – I haven’t deliberately or knowingly listened to anything by them ever since. Maybe I should have another listen (about 40 years later…).

  6. On a good day, very probably.

    But not so much when when others like Jeff T, Thompson R, Nick Lowe
    or Grant Lee Phillips are having their own good days

  8. While don’t think people will be buying multi-disc box sets celebrating the band’s more recent releases, Mike and the ‘boys are still the dogs’ bollocks live

        • Better imho. As great as Wickham was in the Waterboys I saw him solo in Birmingham and he was dire.
          Brother Paul on the other hand is the dogs bollocks plural.

          • From the moment they hit the stage and launch into Where the Action Is you know you’re in for quite a night.

            Up there with Bruce in the onstage stakes

            • I know views differ, but, admittedly just the once, I found the Bro’ Paul and minus Wickham Waterboys to be all spectacle and zero soul. Any sense of the raggle taggle gone, exchanged for a slick rawk show. And it’s very slick, high kicks and girlie singers, aimed at stadia. Spiddal and Findhorn seem distant memories, which, for sure, ties me to but one stage of their evolution, but that’s the Waterboys I return to.

              • In fairness, they were never likely to replicate the transcendent highs of the late period SW years so it seems only sensible MS took another career swerve

              • I’d argue that any set that includes Strange Boat, How Long Will I Love You, Fisherman’s Blues, When Ye Go Away, My Wanderings In The Weary Land, A Bang On The Ear and Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is certainly not your standard ‘rawk’ show. It’s more a demonstration of the stylistic eclecticism they’ve always had. And Mike’s been doing the high kick thing for over a decade at least.

  9. Well, on the prolific balanced with greatness front, just looking at the current century, I would suggest that Kirk Brandon trumps Scott – 19 studio albums between 2000-2024 (so far), not counting re-recorded editions of three of his albums from the 80s.

    Some of his songwriting in recent years has been astounding. Nothing from the latest Spear of Destiny album is on YouTube, but here’s a classic from 2018 – a blistering yet sensitive meditation on the Ariana Grande massacre.

  10. The answer to both is Prince of course. The greatest songwriter to come along in the past forty years and who knows how many unreleased songs are in the vault? If technically his first album was more than forty years ago then….. stating genius over and over again can become boring but it remains true in this case. Perhaps the one songwriting genius to emerge since the seventies.

    Most prolific. Buckethead has recorded 640 studio albums in the last 35 years. Get a shift on Mr Scott!

    Greatest of the last forty years – I would take this as meaning someone who started writing/recording in the eighties thus ruling out perhaps Prince.

    Bound to be entirely subjective (no Scoville scale for how hot your songs are) and I increasingly tend to the view that as a songwriter no-one can equal Paddy McAloon. In football parlance I would say Mr Scott maxed out his talent as Shearer did, Paddy has had more the Bergkamp career.

      • Yeah but what a peak. When you reach those heights, even when you’re past your best you’re still better than most.

        I think his 90s output ranges from very good to good. It’s only when you get to Rave un2 the Joy Fantastic at the end ofthe decade that things start to unravel.

  12. like many others in this thread, I’ve only paid sporadic attention since Dream Harder, which I really like, but I caught them live last year, and this later period song really stood out

  14. I like the early albums, but in greatest writer terms I don’t think Mike is in the same league as the REM boys. And I prefer Colin Meloy if we talking folk tinged, Jason Isbell, Bob Mould Jeff Tweedy and the late Jason Molina for American trad rock, and Mark Everett in terms of range. Oh, and Stuart Murdoch if we are talking about Scotiah artists. Are anyone them actually ‘better’, who knows ?

  15. The albums up to ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ are easily their/his best. I quite like ‘Room to Roam’ too but, after that, it’s a matter of a track here and a track there for me. I always buy their/his new album(s) however- even the expensive boxes (like the new 1985 set). Of their/his latter day efforts I would say the closest they/he comes to a completely satisfying set is ‘Out Of All This Blue’ which has some gorgeous tunes on it. I’m not keen on the ones later where he ‘speaks’ rather than sings.

    I don’t do many gigs but The Waterboys are one of the exceptions. I must have seen them live fifteen to twenty times and I agree that they certainly miss something without Wickham but I remember first seeing them before he joined and when Anto Thistlethwaite was the ‘second fiddle’ (er…on sax) and he was amazing too. A great ‘rock’ saxophone sound which, for me anyway, is up there with Bobby Keys and Clarence Clemons.

    His hat has annoyed me recently. It seems to be getting bigger as the big music gets smaller. He used to have the best hair in rock. I wonder if the two things are linked…

  18. First three songs all from Fisherman’s Blues then “I said we were gonna do some cowboy music..” and it’s a Jagger-Richards cover…

    Its a good show but I don’t think you actually think its proof. But… if not for your terrifically crazy title claim then I wouldn’t have ended up watching this excellent show where Mike Scott embraces his Dylan/ Morrison dreams.

  19. I saw him last year at a very wet Folk by the Oak and he was great. He does like repeating a “profound” phrase over and over again though. My mate and I were making them up – “you’re the toothbrush but not the paste….you’re the toothbrush but not the paste” etc. Affectionately of course.

  20. In the light of Kark Wallinger’s recent death I’d say he was every bit as good and varied, and (imho) better, a songwriter as Mike Scott just less prolific or, probably crucially, high profile/successful. I do like the Waterboys for the same period as others above but nothing recently has done it all for me.

    • Not too much difference in “hits” actually. 5 top 40 for Mike (the biggest also also has Karl on it), 4 for Karl. World Party were pretty big in continental Europe around the time of Goodbye Jumbo also.

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