Top Ten Big Country songs

Stay Alive

I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook Stay Alive, Scott Rowley’s biography of Stuart Adamson, which inspired me to compile a list of my top ten Big Country songs, more or less in order, in Top of the Pops fashion, along with a standout lyric from each song.

10. In This Place

One of Stuart Adamson’s most heart rending vocals, it’s about a community, being torn apart, ‘stone by stone, home by home.’

Standout Lyric

As I age so my learning grows
I still touch the vision
I still smell the rose in this place

9. This Blood’s for You

Not many of Big Country’s later material makes my top ten. This is partly because somewhere between The Seer (album 3) and Peace in our Time (album 4), Stuart Adamson started to acquire an American accent. For me, his voice became less authentic and more polished, but I preferred the rawer vocals of the first three albums. By the time he sang This Blood’s For You, the American accent had bedded in, but it’s a great song in which Adamson seems to suggest that all the suffering on earth is payback for Christ’s suffering on the cross.

Standout Lyric

Man, for every long, lost soul without a shoe
Hey, for all, for all that you do
This blood’s for you

8. Flame of the West

Ostensibly about an inspirational preacher, apparently it might have been written about Ronald Reagan. He was certainly president when Stuart Adamson wrote the song, but forty years later it could equally be about Donald Trump.

Standout Lyric

It’s just how it’s always been
One man with a ruling dream
And everyone falls for him

7. Lost Patrol

There’s a lyric here: ‘There is no beauty here, just the stench of wine and beer’ that has always stuck in my mind. And that’s not even the standout lyric! The inspiration for a fantasy book I wrote called Lost Company.

Standout Lyric

We save no souls
We break no promises

6. I Will Run For You (Theme From Restless Natives)

Soaring lyrics, great guitaring. This was what Big Country excelled at. Apparently, it was a difficult production, but you wouldn’t know it from this uplifting theme tune.

Standout Lyric

In the summer sun and the winter snow
They will come and clouds will go
And show that we are proud again

5. Chance

Many years ago, someone told me that a great song is one that, when it plays unexpectedly on the radio, you have to stop and listen. That’s what happened to me, in Tesco, in the fruit and veg aisle, when Chance started playing from the store’s speakers.

Standout Lyric

All the rain came down
On a cold new town
As he carried you away

4. Where the Rose is Sown

Told from two points of view: government propaganda and the young man who’s reading and responding to it. It’s stirring, outraged and wonderful, and Mark Brzezicki was made for this kind of militaristic drumming!

Standout Lyric

Our name will never die
This time will be forever

3. In a Big Country

‘In a big country, dreams stay with you…stay alive!’ Anthemic, it’s the band’s theme song. Great lyrics that are written about wide themes but with an intensely personal focus, as with many of Stuart Adamson’s songs. Apparently, he grew sick of the whole bagpipe guitars things, but I love them. For this one, I had to pick two sets of standout lyrics.

Standout Lyric 1

So take that look out of here, it doesn’t fit you
Because it’s happened doesn’t mean you’ve been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming

Standout Lyric 2

In a big country, dreams stay with you
Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

Standout Lyric 3

I’m not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

2. Look Away

What a song! Possibly inspired by Harry Tracy, who claimed to run with Butch Cassidy in the Wild Bunch. After Big Country (the song) this could be the song most people know when you say the band’s name.

Standout Lyric

So look away look away
Hide your eyes from the land where I lie cold.
Look away look away
From the lies in the stories that were told.
Look away look away
From the love that I hide way down deep in my soul.

1. Sailor

A slow start and sudden, increase in tempo combine to make Sailor almost seem like two songs in one. The lyrics inspired the arc for my thriller series Angel of the South, and the guitaring is possibly my favourite of all time, by anyone. What a way to end an album.

Standout Lyric

But now we are together we won’t turn back
Where the boats are burned and the ties are black
And I will cry no more, I will cry no more

Further Reading

Book Review: Stay Alive – The Life and Death of Stuart Adamson by Scott Rowley

No Way To Live, the first book of my Angel of the South series.

Feedback

This list could easily change by tomorrow! Look Away and In a Big Country might swap places, and Just A Shadow might well edge out In This Place. But at the time of writing, I stand by what I’ve written!

I’d love to hear your thoughts? Do you totally disagree? Do you prefer later Big Country songs to the early ones?