Big Special
English musical duo

Big Special are a musical duo from the Black Country in the English West Midlands, consisting of vocalist Joe Hicklin and drummer Callum Moloney.
History
Moloney is from Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city, and Hicklin grew up in nearby Walsall. The two first met aged 17 years old, more than a decade before Big Special was formed.
Hicklin began working on the music for what would become Big Special during the COVID-19 lockdowns, which lasted from March 2020 to around May the next year. He sent a demo of the track "This Here Ain't Water" to Moloney, who was playing drums in wedding bands at the time, to persuade him to join the new outfit. They were signed to SO Recordings in December 2022.
After signing with SO Recordings, in May 2023 they released "Shithouse", which had previously appeared on their second EP Black Country Gothic (2022). on 6 December 2023, the single "Trees", was released. Following its underground acclaim, the duo went on to release three more singles in 2024: "Dust Off/Start Again" on 6 February alongside the announcement of their debut album, "Butcher's Bin" on 13 March, and "Black Dog/White Horse" on 2 April. In the midst of these singles, their first LP, Postindustrial Hometown Blues, was released on 10 May.
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This entry incorporates text from “Big Special” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.