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Celebrities sometimes have unusual self-images. For example, St. Vincent’s “Big Time Nothing” has a debatable theme, considering she wrote a No. 1 single for Taylor Swift. Let’s take a look at what St. Vincent is trying to say in one of her recent singles.

St. Vincent’s ‘Big Time Nothing’ underplays the success that she has had

St. Vincent is not the sort of singer who is a household name. Whether you can name any of their songs or not, everyone has heard of Paul McCartney, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, Michael Jackson, and many others. Many people might assume that St. Vincent was a Catholic theologian rather than an indie rocker. This relative anonymity seems to be reflected in the lyrics of her song “Big Time Nothing.”

However, is St. Vincent’s self-image really accurate? While she doesn’t have dozens of hits, she’s reached the top 20 of the Billboard 200 four times. In addition, she co-wrote Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100. Should she be considered a nobody?

St. Vincent is just expressing her truth

Then again, our emotions aren’t always rational. Scratch that, they are rarely rational. If St. Vincent feels like she’s a bit of a nobody, that’s understandable. Everyone has insecurities and a lot of great art has been made about them. We don’t necessarily listen to music to hear the truth. We listen to music to hear an artist’s truth. 

At the end of the day, “Big Time Nobody” has interesting lyrics and a cool beat. It’s better than most of the songs out there. The song is a lot better than most of the music out there so maybe it deserves some slack.

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What she was thinking when she wrote ‘Big Time Nothing’

During a 2024 interview with Paper, St. Vincent discussed how she wrote “Big Time Nothing.” “I had all the verses written — I was working on that song for three years because I’m a crazy person,” she said. “I was trying to crack the verses because there’s a lot of energy in the song because of the baseline and beat, and you can’t put a complicated melody on top of that. It’s too much. It’s such a tricky balance.”

St. Vincent decided that “Big Time Nothing” should sound like the music of the Tom Tom Club, most known for the bouncy new wave hit “Genius of Love.” “The track has energy, the track is going to do the rest so if you try to match the energy of the track with a bombastic vocal?” she added. “It’s like, say less.“

St. Vincent gave fans insight into her album All Born Screaming. “It was so labored over, and I don’t mean that in a bad way,” she said. “It was just so labored over, such a process to get there, to strip away anything that didn’t feel exactly right and to be more intentional about every sound, intentional about every word not that I wasn’t before, like casting aspersions on previous work. But I do think, too, there are emotional places you will only go alone.”

St. Vincent might be one of the big-time nothings of our time — and her fans wouldn’t want it any other way.

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