Denver’s double GRAMMY-nominated band, The Lumineers, release the second single from, ‘Brightside‘, their eagerly anticipated new album. ‘Big Shot‘ poignantly considers the destructiveness of big egos left unchecked, and the bad decisions that can ensue.
Produced by longtime collaborator Simone Felice and David Baron, with mixing and engineering duties also covered by Baron, the track opens with a simple but beautiful piano refrain and Schultz’s arresting vocal. He surely has one of the great voices of recent times. The song doesn’t really kick up a gear until the halfway stage, but then it doesn’t have to, because it is simply quite beautiful. The producers have shown fine judgement and restraint, in resisting the temptation to throw the kitchen sink at the song as it builds towards its climax. They clearly recognised it just didn’t need much more… because it is simply quite beautiful.
“We are all big shots in our own story,” says Schultz, “and, now, we’ve all been humbled over the last 18 months. The video was inspired by the 90s, and the storytelling music videos we grew up watching on MTV.”
The video was directed by the band’s creative director, Nicholas Sutton Bell, along with his brother Dylan Marko Bell. In keeping with the song, the video’s narrative is simple but the execution is stunning. A checkout guy behind the counter of a late-night convenience store faces challenging behaviour from customers of all shapes and sizes, and ages and stages, each of them happy to play the big shot toward the beleaguered checkout guy. Things take an even darker turn when he’s confronted with an armed robber and the narrative spins abruptly off to pick up the story of the desperate thief.
It’s very cinematic and everything – the casting, the actors and their performances, the production and design, lighting, camera, editing – everything screams, ‘seriously talented filmmakers at work.’ It’s a superb video. It helps that the song is – if it needs saying again – simply quite beautiful.
