Cavetown has released “Big Strong Man,” a new single built around the uneasy space between being loved and being truly seen. The track arrives with a companion video and picks up where the fan favorite “Boys Will Be Bugs” left off, looking again at the same corner of Robin Skinner’s adolescence. The song lands as the latest entry from an artist who has made a career out of turning private discomfort into something shared.
For over a decade, Cavetown has built a devoted following on plainspoken honesty, growing from self-recorded songs shared online into a project with billions of streams, multiple RIAA Platinum certifications and songs including “Devil Town,” “Home” and “Juliet” that have become touchstones for a generation of listeners, many of them part of the LGBTQ+ community. That combination, quiet vocals over reliably melodic production, has carried Cavetown from bedroom recordings to sold out shows around the world without the songs themselves losing their close, handmade feel.
“Big Strong Man” explores the pressure of teenage masculinity as experienced by a young queer person, and the strange discomfort of being accepted for a version of yourself that never felt true. It’s a companion piece rather than a retread, catching Skinner from a different angle than “Boys Will Be Bugs” while returning to the same period of his life. Skinner explains it directly: “Big Strong Man – based on a similar time in my life as Boys will be Bugs – is about my struggles with the confusing world of teenage masculinity as a young queer person, and how it sucks to feel loved for a version of yourself that isn’t true.”
The single follows Cavetown’s most recent album, Running With Scissors, which paired Skinner’s bedroom pop instincts with a heavier pop punk pulse across singles including “Rainbow Gal,” “Baby Spoon,” “NPC” and “Tarmac.” Cavetown will carry that record on the road this fall for a North American headline tour, joined by collaborator and indie pop artist Chloe Moriondo. The run comes on the back of a milestone stretch that included a national television performance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, another sign of how far the project’s reach has grown, though the songwriting itself hasn’t strayed from where it started.
“Big Strong Man” doesn’t resolve the discomfort it describes, and that seems to be the point. Watch the video above for the full picture of a song that trades certainty for honesty.
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