In 2021, Self Esteem released Prioritise Pleasure, which was nominated for a Mercury Prize. Since then, the British musician born Rebecca Lucy Taylor made her US TV debut on Corden, received an honorary doctorate from the University Of Sheffield, and covered Jimmy Cliff. Today, she’s sharing “Big Man” with Moonchild Sanelly.
“Big Man” is her first new material since Prioritise Pleasure, though she also featured on Becky Hill’s “True Colours” last month. About “Big Man,” Taylor explained:
Me and Moon wrote a song from the perspective of a good boyfriend. The ones that are just chill and secure so they just leave you to it. The ones that don’t want a medal for doing the bins. The ones that see that you’re working your tits off so they go and get yet another thing you’ve ordered and missed the delivery of from the post office. The ones that don’t take your success as a direct threat to their existence. To me this is real masculinity.
We have both collaborated with Johan Karlberg on our records and I’m so grateful to him for introducing us, it was a joy to make this song together. In my head the video always needed to be an inverse “I Want To Break Free” – Piers Dennis executed this gorgeously cos he’s a fucking Big Man. Self Esteem 3 lez go.
Moonchild Sanelly added:
We were in the studio bonding HARD, having the deepest conversation about relationships and how it’s hard to be bold, loud female artists in a relationship. How you can be the baddest bitch on any stage, but if you have an insecure man he can’t support your success as a woman. Instead of celebrating and supporting you, he sees your success as a personal attack and uses it to pull you down and make you feel bad. And we thought… what would it feel like… to be ourselves, doing what we do, and have a man who properly supported all that we are. So Rebecca and I wrote from the perspective of our ideal partner. The song is from the hypothetical perspective of a man who supports their partner and is happy for their woman. A man that is fully secure. A big man.
Watch the “Big Man” video below.
