William Stuart Adamson was a Scottish rock guitarist and singer. Adamson began his career in the late 1970s as a founding member and performer with the punk rock band Skids. After leaving Skids in 1981, he formed Big Country and was the band's lead singer and guitarist. The group's commercial heyday was in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he was a member of the alternative country band The Raphaels. In the late 1970s the British music journalist John Peel referred to his musical virtuosity as a guitarist as "a new Jimi Hendrix".

Skids are a Scottish punk rock and new wave band, formed in Dunfermline in 1977 by Stuart Adamson, William Simpson, Thomas Kellichan (drums) and Richard Jobson. Their biggest successes were the 1979 single "Into the Valley" and the 1980 album The Absolute Game. In 2016, the band announced a 40th-anniversary tour of the UK with their original singer Richard Jobson.