Nashville’s Big Guy & The Very Large Men reckon with hidden queer love and the bruising cost of self-abandonment on “Only Sin,” a soul-stirring, achingly beautiful acoustic confession that carries heartbreak, religious shame, and hard-won self-recognition with tender, theatrical, fiercely human grace.
“Only Sin” – Big Guy & The Very Large Men
Couldn’t love myself the way that I loved him…
* * *
A hidden love can make a person fluent in disappearance, until devotion itself begins to sound like surrender.
On the brutally vulnerable “Only Sin,” Big Guy & The Very Large Men draw that ache into the open with an intimate acoustic arrangement, warm harmonies, and James Droll’s close-held vocal tracing the distance between wanting to be loved and learning how to love yourself. Tender, wounded, and clear-eyed, the song lingers as a confession of misplaced devotion – and a sacred reckoning with the shame, secrecy, and self-worth carried in its wake.
When I get out of my head
Haven’t made it out of bed just yet
Letting go of the shitty things
I say before my meds kick
Getting better at breathing
And listening before speaking out of turn
Want to love me the way I did
before I fell in love with him
Before I fell in love with him…
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the live music video for “Only Sin,” the achingly intimate second single from Big Guy & The Very Large Men’s upcoming debut EP soft hands, hard times, out June 26th. The Nashville project is fronted by songwriter James Droll, a Pleasantville, Ohio-raised artist whose pen has helped shape songs for Vintage Culture, gavn, Joy Oladokun, and Noah Kahan – yet Big Guy feels like its own necessary arrival: A surreal, tender-hearted, and unmistakably queer outlet built to hold the beauty, danger, humor, and hurt of living openly in the Bible Belt. Following the EP’s first single “COWBOY BOOTS” (featuring Fancy Hagood), “Only Sin” strips the story down to its emotional marrow, inviting listeners into a moment of self-recognition, heartbreak, and release.
Droll frames “Only Sin” as both a personal milestone and a reclamation of narrative – one rooted in lived experience, but open enough to let anyone step inside its ache.
“‘Only Sin’ represents me as a songwriter and quite literally tells a pivotal story in my life as an artist,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “Queer people are so often put in boxes and sold to audiences as an accessory to someone else’s story. This is my story, told by inviting the listener as an equal, inviting the listener to spend a few minutes in my boots!”
That invitation carries into the song’s live, one-shot performance video: A soul-stirring, deeply intimate camper session that captures Big Guy & The Very Large Men gathered shoulder-to-shoulder in warm amber light, letting the song breathe in real time. With crickets chirping outside and the band packed close together inside the van, “Only Sin” becomes a shared exhale – lived, sung, and held by the room as much as performed for the camera.
Droll leads from the center with a vocal that feels raw without ever unraveling, his delivery tracing every bruise in the lyric while Reed Berin and Thomas Onebane’s acoustic guitars move beneath him with gentle, steady grace. Staurie Cain’s keys add a mellow glow, and the background vocals from Charlie Holt and Cain rise around Droll like a soft chorus of witnesses, deepening the song’s ache without crowding its emotional core. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful performance, full of delicate force: The kind of live video that doesn’t simply preserve a song, but lets us feel the pulse of the people carrying it.
Part of what makes the performance so affecting is how fully it understands the song beneath it – not as a polished confession, but as a memory still tender to the touch.
The song’s first verse arrives in the tender mess of becoming yourself again: “When I get out of my head / Haven’t made it out of bed just yet,” Droll sings, grounding the song not in grand revelation, but in the everyday work of staying present. The line that follows – “Letting go of the shitty things I say before my meds kick” – lands with disarming specificity, placing “Only Sin” in a world where healing isn’t polished or linear. It’s breath by breath, apology by apology, morning by morning.
The music honors that fragility.
Rather than pushing the song toward catharsis, the arrangement leaves space around Droll’s voice, allowing each confession to hang in the air before the next one arrives. The guitars fall in soft, descending patterns; the keys drift in with a faint golden warmth; the harmonies gather at the edges like friends who know when to step closer and when to let silence do its work. Nothing here feels ornamental. Every sound exists in service of the story.
“‘Only Sin’ highlights the story of how I ended up in Nashville, the relationship that brought me here, and the unresolved religious baggage I brought along with me,” Droll shares. “I gave my self-worth to whoever I could convince to love me, and… to clarify in case my intended tone is not clear, that is a shit way to live.”
That plainspoken honesty cuts to the center of “Only Sin.” Droll isn’t romanticizing the relationship at the heart of the song; he’s looking back at the version of himself who mistook devotion for proof, proximity for safety, being chosen for being whole. “Loving you was our secret / One that you were always better at keeping” is devastating because it compresses an entire imbalance into two lines: One person shrinking to make room for another person’s fear, one love hidden so thoroughly it begins to erase the person doing the loving.
By the time Droll reaches, “And that’s my only sin / Couldn’t love myself the way that I loved him,” the song’s title opens like a wound and a release all at once. It’s a remarkable lyric: Biblical in its framing, conversational in its delivery, and crushing in its emotional clarity. The “sin” isn’t desire. It isn’t queerness. It isn’t leaving home, loving deeply, or breaking down in the produce aisle of a Publix. It’s the old, learned reflex of abandoning yourself in pursuit of another person’s acceptance – and the song’s deepest power comes from Droll naming that reflex without letting it define him.
Fell apart in a landslide state
Let it slide when you forgot my birthday
Didn’t need you to move me here
To get dumped while pouring shitty beer
Loving you was our secret
One that you were always better at keeping
I remember the first time
you told me to hide until the coast is clear
Why the hell did you bring me all the way here
And that’s my only sin
Couldn’t love myself
the way that I loved him
“Only Sin” is the kind of song that makes the rest of the upcoming soft hands, hard times EP feel instantly legible.
It opens a door into Big Guy & The Very Large Men’s world by showing how much emotional precision can live inside a project this playful, theatrical, and surreal. Even at its most stripped-back, the song carries the full shape of Droll’s artistry: The wit, the ache, the camp, the candor, the refusal to flatten queer experience into easy language or expected performance.
“At Big Guy & The Very Large Men we are here at the intersection of smart and stupid to bring you something best described as ‘Death Cab for Country’ meets the queer experience living in the buckle of the bible belt,” Droll says. “It’s fun, stupid, campy, surreal, moving, insightful, and honest. Terrifyingly so!”
That “terrifyingly so” may be the key. Big Guy & The Very Large Men’s music works because it understands that humor and heartbreak often come from the same place: The need to survive a world that can be cruel, ridiculous, holy, humiliating, and unexpectedly beautiful all within the same breath. “Only Sin” is the tenderest expression of that ethos so far, but it’s also a signal flare for the larger project – a body of work that treats queer life in Nashville not as a side note or aesthetic flourish, but as the living center of the story.
This is also what makes Big Guy feel so vital.
Droll isn’t asking to be translated for a wider audience, softened for comfort, or reduced to representation alone. He’s building a world on his own terms, one where a camper can become a chapel, a breakup can become scripture, and a line about self-worth can land with the force of testimony. The result is music that feels deeply human before it feels like anything else – vulnerable, funny, bruised, generous, and alive with the radical power of telling the truth exactly as it happened.
Stream “Only Sin” and watch Big Guy & The Very Large Men’s live music video premiere exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and dive into our conversation with James Droll below as he opens up about the making of soft hands, hard times, the “uno reverse card” to his conservative Christian upbringing, the queer Nashville community at the heart of Big Guy, and the long road toward telling his story in his own voice.
By the end of “Only Sin,” that hidden love has nowhere left to hide. What began as surrender becomes self-recognition; what once looked like shame becomes a song wide enough to step inside, sit with, and leave carrying a little more tenderness for the person you used to be.
There’s no one to blame here no
higher power to bear my shame
What’ll happen if i break down in Publix again
In front of all your friends
In the produce aisle
You’ll say “hey, it’s been a while”
A different where and when
But I’m right back there again
Couldn’t love myself the way
Couldn’t love myself the way
Couldn’t love myself
the way that I loved him
— —
:: stream/purchase Only Sin here ::
:: connect with Big Guy… here ::
:: stream/purchase soft hands, hard times here ::
— —
“Only Sin” – Big Guy & The Very Large Men
A CONVERSATION WITH BIG GUY & THE VERY LARGE MEN
Atwood Magazine: James, for those who are just discovering Big Guy today through this writeup, what do you want them to know about you and your music?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men (James Droll): Hi, welcome! If at any point you get scared as we tread into uncertain emotional waters, please just focus on the comically large hat. My life has been a roller coaster and that’s not unique to me, it’s a story owned by all queer, trans, and all communities that have been othered and are just fighting to make sense of a world that was built to actively exclude them. I don’t say that to make anyone feel anything, it’s just the way things are, and while we’re being real… This particular roller coaster is really fun.
Who are some of your musical north stars, and what are you most excited about the music you're making today?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: Max Bemis of Say Anything, Hayley Williams, Frightened Rabbit, slim dan, Death Cab for Cutie, The Chicks, Kacey Musgraves, Watchhouse are a few off the dome! I’m most excited about how much fun I had making these songs with old friends and a few new ones. These songs are what happens when you dance while no one’s watching. We did it for the pure joy of it, and you’ll hear that!
You debuted this new project earlier this year with “COWBOY BOOTS.” Why break the ice and introduce Big Guy with this song in particular – what makes it special, for you?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: It was the first song we wrote that clicked a few things into place. We started the song with me on clarinet playing into a looping pedal which led to a theme of us looking for more and more bizarre, fun analog ways to start songs. After that, the rest of the EP kinda just appeared! It’s a great intro to the world that we’re living in and is just the beginning.
Today we’re premiering the video for your second single, “Only Sin.” What’s the story behind this song?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: “Only Sin” highlights the story of how I ended up in Nashville, the relationship that brought me here, and the unresolved religious baggage I brought along with me. I gave my self worth to whoever I could convince to love me and… to clarify in case my intended tone is not clear, that is a shit way to live.
You've said you consider this one of the best songs you've ever written, and I absolutely love that – why? What makes it one of your favorites?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: I know how it sounds but when I say best I mean it considers, invites, and challenges the listener. That’s what all my favorite songs do and that’s the bar I set for myself. It’s taken me time to fully settle into my voice as a queer artist and confront the parts of me that didn’t feel ready to share these stories in their full truth. With “Only Sin” specifically, I really tried to write it like no one would ever read it, because at the time I thought that was true.
You’ve also called “Only Sin” the “uno reverse card” to your conservative Christian upbringing, and I’d love to hear you cook on that concept, why you call it that.
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: OK, I will lead with… I was not an easy child to have in Sunday School. There’s a certain type of child that just looks you up and down and says the thing you’re most insecure about. And you best believe that was me with my hand raised, twitching furiously, watching beads of sweat form on the brow of my volunteer teacher as I’m trying to specifically narrow down the specific rules of how going to Hell works. y’know the logistics! All that to say, I read the bible and went to church 2-3 days a week, took what I learned, and applied it to my life which ironically could never include the version of modern day Christianity that I was subjected to.
You keep coming back to the line, “And that’s my only sin, couldn’t love myself the way that I loved him.” Can you tell me more about your lyrics, the story of this song, and the meaning behind that lyric?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: I mentioned above how much of my self worth I’d place in my partner and that lyric pretty much sums it up. I was in a relationship at the time, with someone ten years older than me, that I was in awe of and I didn’t realize at the time how much that reverence would play into the power dynamic. I didn’t realize how ungrounded my self esteem truly was until I moved my dumb ass to Nashville from Cincinnati after dating this man I met online for 6 months only for us to break up 3 months after I moved. It wasn’t always easy, and it definitely wasn’t always fun but I look back at everything and everyone that brought me to Nashville with so much gratitude. I’ve been here over ten years, this is home!
What do you hope listeners take away from “Only Sin” and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: I hope they find a piece of themselves in it and if not, I hope they feel invited to spend a couple minutes in my boots. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I’m so not afraid to not be someone’s cup of tea. Not everyone was blessed with the spiritual gift of taste!
This is also the second song off the soft hands, hard times EP. What can fans expect from your upcoming record?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: At Big Guy & The Very Large Men we are here at the intersection of smart and stupid to bring you something best described as “Death Cab for Country” meets the queer experience living in the buckle of the bible belt. It’s fun, stupid, campy, surreal, moving, insightful, and honest. Terrifyingly so!
In the spirit of paying it forward, who are you listening to these days that you would recommend to our readers?
Big Guy & The Very Large Men: I have been obsessed with the new Slayyyter album, the new Robyn, Audrey Hobert, Lily Allen. And my Nashville fam + friends in no particular order: The Cowgays, Fancy Hagood, Joy Oladokun, Bridey Costello, Sid Dorey, Abby Cates, Maddie Medley, Whitney Fenimore, and She Returns From War (and so many more just DM me)
— —
:: stream/purchase Only Sin here ::
:: connect with Big Guy… here ::
:: stream/purchase soft hands, hard times here ::
— —
“Only Sin” – Big Guy & The Very Large Men
— — — —
Connect to Big Guy & The Very Large Men on
Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
© Caleb Hoh
© Caleb Hoh:: Stream Big Guy & The Very Large Men ::
