The Songs - In a Big Country

I’m gonna make this a free-for-everybody column so you can get an idea of what I’m planning with these pieces on specific songs. As much as I love this, I still need to pay bills, so I really REALLY hope you might consider becoming a paid subscriber. All I ask for is $5 a month. A little means a lot. It truly does. If you’d like to join but just don’t have the scratch right now, I get that. Hit me up and I’ll hook you up. I just want as many eyes on these columns as possible. I think you’re gonna enjoy them. And I’d love to be poked and prodded along the way.

This is the start of what I hope will become a regular thing here. I outlined my plan earlier this week, so if you missed it please check that bit out.

These songs are in no order whatsoever. I’ll write about them as they pop into my head. Since last week I wrote a piece on Big Country founder Stuart Adamson, this song has been on repeat. That’s why it gets the lead-off spot.

These are songs that visited me, and decided they wanted to stay.

In a Big Country - Big Country (1983)

I never took the smile away from anybody's face
And that's a desperate way to look
For someone who is still a child

It was a strange time, the 80s. A time of sonic upheaval. Everything got bigger and louder. The hair. The drums. Especially the drums, which started sounding like they were being engineered by people suffering from significant hearing loss. As the years went on this became progressively more annoying, but initially it was exciting. Especially when they came at you through your car’s shitty radio, or more likely, your tiny TV speaker, because this was the dawn of MTV. I can’t remember the first time I heard “In a Big Country”, but it might have been via the video, which for whatever reason featured the boys trolling all over Scotland in 3 wheelers, searching for unspecified hidden treasure, while continually being bested, and at one point punched out, by a female rival significantly better looking than they were. What this had to do with the song itself was anybody’s guess, but compared to most videos of the time, it was Citizen fucking Kane. Well done lads.

The aforementioned drums kicked things off….rolling like somebody in a marching band warming up before jumping off the parade. And then those guitars come in. Except they didn’t sound like guitars. They sounded like somebody breaking into the wires of the foot pedal and crossing them all up. Some early reviewer mentioned that the guitars sounded like bagpipes, which eternally pissed Stuart Adamson off, but it wasn’t that far off the mark. If so, it was certainly LOUD bagpipes. The song sounded anthemic, the sort that crammed bodies in front of stages. It was impossible to listen to standing still. Even if you were alone you felt like doing the pogo. It defined the 80s sound before we knew what the 80s sound was. It was, to use a phrase at the time, Big Music.

And that vocal aside. I’m still now sure what he’s saying. Let’s go with “Cha!” The Scottish equivalent of one of Springsteen’s grunts. Later there’s a “Cha….Wah Cha!”, and once we became familiar with the song we sang each as heartily as we did the chorus. And through it all he implored us….”STAY ALIVE”, even if we have to “come up screaming”. This was a song that could improve your mental health. That sounds flippant but I don’t mean it that way. Certain songs are like opioids. They can affect your serotonin levels, which is the science behind being kicked in the ass.

And it was the first song off the band’s first record. Not a bad start. And a ballsy one. You kick things off with this, and you’d better be able to keep pace with yourself (for the record, the rest of the album “The Crossing” does not disappoint. The song was no fluke..).

I’ve listened to it 1001 times. It should sound dated. After all, so many of the 80s tracks that tried the same formula, huge drums, impossibly big guitars, sound laughable today….the sort of thing that Beavis and Butthead were invented to make fun of. But “In a Big Country” sounds completely unique still. If I heard it for the first time right now, it would still stun me. I would not get out of the car until it was over. It instantly takes over any room it’s played in. Not many songs have that sort of staying power.

Stuart Adamson died in 2001. His daughter is named Kirsten. She is also a musician. I recently came across her version of this song, and it’s a gentle and soft reminder of how beautiful a composition “In a Big Country” truly is.

I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered

….and it sings like something Sandy Denny might have pulled from the wind. In a way, the band’s arrangement worked against the fragile lyrics, but the fact that you can either scream that line, or whisper it, is why I keep coming back. There’s blood in there. Struggle. A sense of home and what it means to be forced to leave it. It’s timeless, and people will be listening to it forever. Stay alive, indeed.

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
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted

In a bit…

—tf