"The Big Music" is a song by British band the Waterboys, released on 2 April 1984 as the lead single from their second studio album A Pagan Place.

[7] The song features Eddi Reader on backing vocals, during the early phase of her career when she was working as a session vocalist in London.

Scott was later critical of the video in his autobiography, "The concept made me cringe - bigness, outdoors, mountains, awful clichés of the time, and not what my song was about.

[15] In a review of A Pagan Place, Mike Daly of The Age noted the song "fashions a spectacular Hadrian's Wall of sound around the slow, soulful melody".

[16] Diana Valois of The Morning Call considered it "joyfully proud, creating exhilarating and intoxicating rushes not unlike Springsteen's 'Night'".

[17] Tom Harrison of The Province felt it "approximately describes the magnitude of the LP's eight tracks" and added "there is nothing small about the ambitions of Mike Scott".

[18] In a 2017 retrospective on the "best of Mike Scott", Tom Doyle of Q included "The Big Music" as one of ten tracks on the list and described it as a "yearning rocker".

[22][23] A 1985 performance of the song at London's Town & Country Club featured backing vocals from Sinéad O'Connor in her first UK live appearance.