Pixies - Gigantic

"Hey Paul, let's have a ball"

Album: Surfer Rosa [debut album]
Recorded: Somerville, Massachusetts
Genre: Rock, Indie Rock
Album Release: March 21st 1988
Single Release: August 22nd 1988 [lead single]
Length: 3.26
Producer: Steve Albini & Gil Norton
Vocalist: Kim Deal [age 26]
Label: 4AD Records

Official Audio


Live in 1988

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Credits

Details

• The song is the first ever Pixies single.
  
• Gigantic was the only song on Surfer Rosa that wasn't entirely written by frontman Black Francis. Kim Deal co-wrote the song and also performed the vocals. 
• The song is about a woman having sex with a guy called Paul. People have speculated that 'gigantic' refers to Paul's penile region although, in a 1988 interview with Sounds Magazine, Kim Deal denied this, telling them "I'm fresh and clean." Although with lyrics like "gigantic, gigantic, a big, big love" I'm not sure I believe her.
  
• Kim Deal joined The Pixies as their bassist in 1986. She couldn't play bass. She didn't own a bass. She largely got the job because she was the only person to respond to an ad, placed by the band, saying they were looking for a bassist. If you don't ask you don't get.
  
  What Kim really wanted to do was write songs and sing. This would, over time, cause friction with band leader Black Francis. Which is what he insisted people call him. Exacerbated by the pressures of touring, things soon spilled over with Francis throwing a guitar at Deal during a show in Germany. Deal, in return, refused to play dates unless she could include her own songs. The situation would resolve itself when Kim formed her own band, The Breeders, in 1989. The peace however didn't last. When, in 1990, the rest of the band moved to Los Angeles in order to work on their third album, Kim refused to go. They went into the studio without her. The final, at the time at least, Pixies album came out in 1991. The band, briefly including Deal, would eventually reform in 2003.
  
  
• Kurt Cobain has said that Gigantic is his favourite Pixies song.
• There is a cover version by Reel Big Fish.
  


• "My favourite song on that record is ‘Gigantic.’ The way Kim delivers her vocal her personality is so strong and her voice is so pretty and distinctive. She has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard. By that I don’t just mean she sings in tune, there is a charisma and her enthusiasm for music comes through in her singing. The best description I could give of it is that it sounds simultaneously like she’s smiling and raising an eyebrow at you when she’s singing. You clearly get a very emotional tone from her. She’s not adopting a persona, she’s just singing as herself." (Producer Steve Albini talking to PSN Europe)
  
  
• "We started doing a bit of their loud quiet loud dynamic, where we would bring things down to bass and drums, the kind of thing you'd hear on a Sisters of Mercy song. I wanted to do a song that didn't change chords, like Lou Reed's Sweet Jane. So I just said to Kim, let's do a song called 'Gigantic,' this is the bass riff, quiet in the verses loud in the choruses." (Black Francis talking to Uncut Magazine)
  

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