From the streets of South Shields to selling out arenas around the world: Sam Fender has come a long way.
The Geordie artist burst onto the music scene in 2018 with his first single Dead Boys – which was swiftly followed in 2019 with his debut album, Hypersonic Missiles. It became a bestseller, the critics loved it, and Fender soon found himself playing alongside Liam Gallagher, Bob Dylan and Declan McKenna as his star took off.
It’s continued to rise even higher in the years since especially with the album Seventeen Going Under following two years later. As Fender gets ready to play The O2 – not once, but twice – this week for his People Watching tour, here’s our rundown of his best six tracks to listen to beforehand.
Poundshop Kardashians
The spoken-word poetry that dominates Poundshop Kardashians acts as a metronome heartbeat in this lament about consumerism and our toxic relationship with fame. It calls out celebrity culture, though tongue in cheek (see: the “orange faced baby at the wheel of the ship” that Fender mentions in the second verse). But when his chanting explodes into the spiky chorus, there’s genuine anguish there too.
“How am I supposed to change it,” he laments, “if I can’t see the wood for the trees?”
Hypersonic Missiles
Does the title mean anything? Does it heck, but it sure sounds good – as does this single, which carries on the theme nicely. Taken from his 2019 album, this is a song for the end-times: its narrator was described by fender as “convinced the world is on its last legs; they know that it is rife with injustice but feel completely helpless and lacking the necessary intelligence to change it while remaining hopelessly addicted to the fruits of consumerism.”
But there’s still joy amid the chaotic drums and guitar riffs of the track. And it’s not often you hear a pop song with the lyrics: “I eat myself to death to feed the corporate machine… God bless America and all of its allies/ I’m not the first to live with wool over my eyes.”
The Borders
This is Fender’s own favourite song from Hypersonic Missiles and it’s a minor masterpiece of storytelling. Against a propulsive guitar riff and driving drums, he tells the story of two friends “like brothers” who grow up and go their separate ways. Listen to the lyrics for some disarmingly confessional heart-bearing – “no wonder you can’t stand me, I can’t stand me too” – as well as a killer guitar riff that tears through the end of the song like a motorbike down a long highway.
Dead Boys
The ethereal, echoing vocals of Dead Boys’ open moments are almost hymn-like in their execution and suit the theme of this haunting song perfectly. Written as a tribute to all the male suicides in Fender’s hometown of South Shields, it overlays guitar with strings and an echoing voice, before segueing into something meatier. One of Fender’s earliest ever releases, the lyrics are still devastating six years later. “Nobody ever could explain/ All the dead boys in our hometown,” Fender sighs, and of course the words hit like a punch to the throat.
Will We Talk?
This tale of a one-night stand is a slow-burning indie rocker that is a firm favourite at Fender’s gigs – for good reason. It bursts into life around the three-second mark and doesn’t let up the entire runtime. There are flavours of rock’n’roll in this euphoric single – especially of Bruce Springsteen, whom Fender has credited with influencing his music.
And the winner is... Seventeen Going Under
The euphoric tone of this single is at odds with the bleakness of Fender’s lyrics – something he does with devastating efficiency here. He’s since called it a tribute to his 17-year-old self: in particular watching his mother Shirley struggle to keep them afloat after she stopped being able to work due to illness.
“That's when my rose-tinted glasses fell off,” he later said. The resulting song is a superb, soaring guitar song that efficiency conjures up what it feels like to be 17: almost an adult, but not quite. Plus, isn’t it gorgeous to hear that Geordie accent come through on the words “f***ing joker”. A true winner, and one that never fails to bring the feels.
