Supergrass singer Gaz Coombes releases World's Strongest Man, his first new music since his Mercury Prize-nominated Matador, and it's addressing issues like masculinity, ego and anxiety attacks.At first glance, an album called The World's Strongest Man seems to suggest a compendium of tracks from The Rock's greatest hit movies, but rather than being a celebration of all things macho, Oxfordshire singer-songwriter Gaz Coombes has decided to subvert the meaning, instead using it as a jumping off point to address topics like ego, mental health and masculinity.
The title was inspired by artist Grayson Perry's book The Descent of Man and subsequent Channel 4 series, which looked at how modern men are struggling physically and mentally under the traditional notions of manliness.
"I thought that book was amazing and illuminating and really important for men to read in terms of what seems to be an in-built way of being for some young men, to protect their territory and be the hard guy.
"It's just difficult, the world's closed up and shrunk and ultimately we're all just human beings. I try not to separate males and females, I know that it sounds idealistic but I do try to look at it like that.
"At first I liked it in the sense of, what if I was the world's strongest man at being a bit weird and bit rubbish at things? Being the greatest at being not complete, it's hard to explain but then I thought it was great, the irony of these ridiculous alpha males, who dominate and cause chaos for everyone."
― Mahogany Loggins (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 3 May 2018 15:12 (five years ago) link