real thick by bearfffbear

This album is songs for men with bellies. We hide them too often, and it's time to show them - so please stop wearing dark colours! The artwork is Rodin's plaster of Honore de Balzac, and the end product had the novelist in a dressing gown! Like the artwork, the album is about real people, and each song has been sent to the person whom it evokes.

In fact this has been a difficult album directive. I always make myself a set of rules before writing music, and in this case, the primary directive, telling the subject that I've written the song has gotten mixed results. Kevin loved his song, as did him mum and dad. Rob has not spoken to me since I wrote the song. Tim has not proved contactable, and Guy has proved so far as elusive. Joe seems to have visited the YouTube video of his song a number of times, but has not left comment. But the views continue to go up.

This is the practical part of an intellectual project: see my Afterword, in Glenn Fosbreay and Nikki Puckey's Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music (Palgrave, 2021).