A Pagan Place - Songs

Songs

A Pagan Place expanded The Waterboys' treatment of spiritual themes beyond the Christian beliefs of "December" from The Waterboys. "A Church Not Made With Hands" is an ode to a woman who "is everywhere and no place / Her church not made with hands".

Both "All the Things She Gave Me" and "The Thrill is Gone" discuss the end of a romantic relationship. "Rags" and "Somebody Might Wave Back" discuss despair and optimism in loneliness. Scott's songwriting has been criticized as being overly introspective, and all four tracks contain some element of self-reflection.

"The Big Music" was released as a single, and became a descriptor of the sound of the album, the preceding debut The Waterboys and the following album This Is the Sea. Usage of the term spread to include other bands with a similar sound. The single included "Bury My Heart" and "The Earth Only Endures". "Bury My Heart", a reference to "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", is described by Anderson as "a lament to the decimated American Red Indians". "The Earth Only Endures" is a traditional Sioux song arranged by Scott.

"Red Army Blues" first appeared on the twelve-inch single for "December" from The Waterboys. The song is a first-person narrative of the life of a young Soviet soldier in World War II who participates in the Battle of Berlin. The soldier, along with many others, is sent to the Gulag by Joseph Stalin. Al Stewart's 1974 song "Roads to Moscow" tells a very similar story. Both songs are based upon the book The Diary of Vikenty Angorov.

The final track of the original release, "A Pagan Place", featuring a trumpet solo from Lorimer, is an ambiguous questioning of the process of Christianizing a Pagan culture.

The song "Cathy", included on the album's re-issue, was originally a Nikki Sudden song. Sudden writes about an evening in 1982 when Sudden was staying in Scott's apartment: "Late that night – around midnight – Mike recorded a lead vocal to the backing track for my song, Cathy. We did a quick mix and that was that until twenty years ago (sic) when he includes the number on the reissue of his A Pagan Place album". This 2002 reissue credits Sudden as the song's author.