A Great Big World

Near the end of our last post was the following piece of information: "Holden co-wrote three songs on A Great Big World's sophomore album When The Morning Comes (2015)." So, it's not surprising that today's subject is... A Great Big World.

Ian Axel (l) and Chad King (r)

Ian Axel and Chad King (born Chad Vaccarino) met at New York University, where they were both were music business students and Axel is said to have convinced King to write a song together. King agreed to work with Axel after hearing him sing. They both wrote and performed songs together prior to Axel embarking on a solo career in which he released an independent album called I'm On To You (2007) featuring songs that were all co-written by King. From this good album, here's Stand Tall:

Here's Beautiful Somewhere:

... And here's We Are:

In 2011, their song This Is the New Year was licensed to various television networks and was used as the theme song for MTV's I Used to Be Fat as well as being featured on The Amazing Race, ESPN, One Tree Hill, and Good Morning America. Ian Axel and Chad King went on national tour and performed as the openers for Ingrid Michaelson, Matthew Morrison (Glee), and Five for Fighting.

Here's This Is the New Year:

The duo re-branded itself in 2012 which is when they took the official name A Great Big World. They released a six-song EP after obtaining funding from the crowdsource funding website Kickstarter. In 2013, the duo's profile was raised significantly after their song This Is the New Year was covered on the TV show Glee and licensed for use on various other TV shows. That same year, A Great Big World signed to Epic and released the three-song EP This Is the New Year, which featured the single Say Something.

Following its usage on American reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance, the track gained attention from singer Christina Aguilera, who wanted to collaborate with A Great Big World on the song. Quickly afterwards, a re-recorded version of Say Something with Aguilera was released on November 4, 2013.

Say Something is a slow-tempo Indie Pop piano ballad which talks about a breakup, where the lover is implored to make a statement that could potentially reverse plans, with the singers expressing humility, sadness and regret. In the single version with Aguilera, she plays a ghost of the lover to whom the song is addressed as she traces the steps of the lead vocal. The song was praised by music critics for its powerful lyrics, the emotional composition and Aguilera's vocal delivery. At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, the song earned A Great Big World and Aguilera a Grammy Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Say Something did not sell significantly well until the version with Aguilera was available. It debuted at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart after A Great Big World and Aguilera performed the song on The Voice. It eventually peaked at number four and has since sold over four million copies in the United States. It also topped the singles charts in Australia, Belgium, and Canada.

Their debut album, Is There Anybody Out There?, was released on January 21, 2014. It peaked at #3 in the US Top 200 chart.

Rockstar was the opening track:

Then came Land of Opportunity:

Both versions of Say Something are included, as well as This Is the New Year. The song that immediately caught my attention (naturally) was Everyone Is Gay; a Broadway-like tongue-in-cheek paean to the advantages of being gay:

Already Home was the follow-up single to Say Something, peaking at #24 on the US Adult Top 40:

Also in 2014, Chad came out as a gay man in a video uploaded on VEVO. Titled ‘Day 23 - A Day In the Life: Food for Thought', a new episode from A Great Big World’s video diary, the black and white clip shows Chad revealing a very personal story. He talks about getting diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) when he was in college, and finding the right treatment for him. However, it’s not all about MS what Chad talks in the video. He also subtly told fans that he is a gay man (revealing the news for the first time in public). He said that around the time he was finishing college, “I was grappling with my own sexuality, dealing with coming out to my closest friends and family members…”.

In 2015 A Great Big World dropped a single, Hold Each Other, a cut of their upcoming second album. “[The reception] has been really good, overwhelmingly positive,” says Chad, who sings the most buzzed about lyric on the single: “Something happens when I hold him.”

“Originally the lyric in the chorus was ‘something happens when I hold her,’ ” says Ian. “And after a day away from the song, I was like, ‘Wait a minute, how is Chad going to sing that line? We need to change it.’ So we changed it and it became a very powerful song for us.”

The change was subtle, yet it greatly magnified the track’s emotional resonance, especially for its singer. “I think what is really interesting is that I was [at first] uncomfortable singing it as ‘Something happens when I hold him,’ ” Chad explains. “The fact that I was uncomfortable singing it, as someone who’s gay, it showed me and Ian that we have to spread this message because I shouldn’t be scared to say what’s in Pop music. It isn’t done in Pop music often, not in this way. The fact that I was scared to say that showed us that we needed to do it.”

As Ian explains, it wasn’t originally a statement. "But it became a statement in a way. It’s so subtle that I don’t think people really hear it on the first or second listen and it’s just Chad singing about the person he loves and wants to hold and it’s really not a big deal.”

The moment was somewhat revelatory for the pair, who had, in swapping a pronoun, slammed into Pop music’s generic heteronormativity.

The album was released on November 13, 2015 with the title When the Morning Comes. We heard All I Want Is Love and the album's title track in our last story. Today, let's listen to the album's second single, Oasis:

... The album's third single, Won't Stop Running:

... And the album's fourth and final single, Where Does the Time Go:

Beyond finishing the album and going on a tour in early 2016, the guys also have a Broadway musical in the works that Axel says they've been developing for three years. “It’s been a dream of ours to do this since we’ve known each other. We’re pretty much finished with revisions on the first draft, we’re about to go to a director, and there are some Broadway producers onboard," he says. "It’s a show about family and what family is and how family is what you make it. There are definitely some twists and turns we can’t give away.”

"It’s kind of our music but on steroids," Axel sums up. "We don’t have to write to any form or structure and we can just do whatever our hearts desire because of the stage; anything can happen on the stage."

We're looking forward to it, guys. Bring it on!