I’m certainly not the next Bruce Springsteen
In a landscape dominated by bands playing identikit guitar music, Sam Fender’s songs stand out. He speaks to about the pressures of fame, male mental health and his plans to convert the hype around him into something more tangible
SAM FENDER’S blistering guitar playing and searing commentary on all manner of topics have put him and his home town on the map. The last few months have been a whirlwind for the 25-year-old from North Shields.
“Hype can be a dangerous thing,” he tells me on the eve of the release of his now-number one debut album, Hypersonic Missiles.
It’s no exaggeration to say winning the Critics’ Choice prize (previous recipients include Adele and Florence Welch) at the Brit Awards in February set him on this trajectory.
“It’s definitely been like an adrenaline shot since that,” he says.
Sam and his band used to perform to a few hundred fans each night, before he was spotted performing in a pub in his home town by Ben Howard’s manager.
Now he has the pulling power to sell 40,000 tickets to a European tour in an hour. He characterises this disruption as “four or five months of complete change” but the truth is that it was a little more taxing than that.
Sam’s gruelling tour schedule almost ended his career before it had even begun. On doctor’s orders he pulled out of an envied afternoon set at Glastonbury festival just two days before. He subsequently cancelled a string of tour dates. The cause? A serious vocal cord haemorrhage.
“I was really lucky in that I stopped at the right time,” he says.
“Had I have gone on any longer I could have really permanently damaged myself. But luckily... luckily I recovered.
“It took quite a bit of time but I did rehabilitation with my voice and stuff – and learned some coping mechanisms and techniques to help with the stress and anxiety.”
“Since then it’s kind of been
golden. I’m very lucky,” he adds, optimistically.
More than lucky, some might say. He is at pains to make clear that drink and cigarettes had nothing to do with his illness.
“I was never a big smoker or drinker anyway. It wasn’t really that that did it,” he explains.
And it’s hard not to believe him. Before his illness, Sam’s touring schedule could only be described as Herculean.
Last year he played some 170 gigs, he says, and this year he has already played about 100.
“It’s just daft,” he laughs.
When he finally returned to the stage in July, it was to support two of the biggest names in music: Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
The folk-rock behemoths teamed up for a one-off gig in London’s Hyde Park, and Sam was on the bill too.
“It was ridiculous,” he says simply. He’s been much touted by critics for the subjects he deals with in his songs, topics you wouldn’t hear many of his indie-rock contemporaries tackling head on.
Dead Boys addresses the suicide of a close friend (and the issue of male mental health) while Two People explores domestic abuse using tangled, shifting lyrics.
“It can be cathartic but it can also be quite exposing,” he says of his music, after a pause.
Is it tough to write about issues so close to the bone?
“I tend to write my songs about other people or fictional characters loosely based on real people in my life – or based upon myself,” he replies.
“I tend not to make it directly about myself and that separation allows it to be... it makes me comfortable to sing about it because then it’s not 100% gospel or 100% my life.
“It’s an adaptation of my life. “Sometimes it’s hard.... Sometimes it’s hard to sing Dead Boys on stage because I lost a friend to suicide.
“Then I know I’m singing it for him. It doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy it and that it’s not a good thing.”
Despite some good work by charities and celebrities in recent years to put male mental health in the spotlight (see Justin Bieber, Stormzy and James Arthur), the topic still feels taboo. But Sam has seen real, positive results.
He tells me about a man who was planning to kill himself by crashing his car but while driving he heard the singer giving an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live about Dead Boys.
He turned the car around and drove home before seeking help. Later he emailed Sam to tell him what happened.
“That guy who decided not to kill himself that day because he heard Dead Boys and he heard an interview with me...
“That will always be the best thing that has ever happened in my career,” he says with a fierce conviction.
“It doesn’t matter how many records I sell or how many shows I sell out, that is just amazing.”
Critics have flocked to compare Sam to Bruce Springsteen.
It’s an easy comparison – he’s an avid fan of The Boss and his tracks are known to feature an occasional saxophone or rolling, cacophonous drum beat. But he’s loathe to accept the comparison.
“I’m certainly not the next Bruce Springsteen,” he says with audible exasperation.
“Bruce Springsteen has done 19 studio albums. He’s a genius. He’s one of the greatest singersongwriters of all time. I’ve not even released my debut album and people are already comparing us to him.”
Sam, however, cannot deny that his success comes at a time when guitar music is on the wane, displaced by US rap, soul, hip hop and dance.
Not that he has an issue with this. When he’s not on stage or in the studio, he’s listening to rap.
“I don’t think it really matters what sort of music is in the charts as long as the song is good. That’s all that matters.
“A good song transcends its genre. A good song can be played by anybody. A good song can be played on a piano or...
“You could turn a hip hop song into a rock song if you wanted to. “A good song is a good song.”
Sam proved his point in February by covering Ariana Grande’s Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge, transforming it into “a total Smiths emo song”.
But despite the hype around his debut, the anxiety and illness, Sam is determined to enjoy the ride.
“I am learning ways to cope,” he says.
“I think the best way to look at it is, ‘Yes, it’s pressure, but for Christ’s sake, it’s amazing’.
“You never know when this thing is going to end.”
JIMMY EAT WORLD
JIMMY Eat World are not a band known for venturing outside the hook-laden guitar sound they helped carve out but on this record they reach for the future by turning back to the past.
That music – the heavy metal of Quiet Riot, Ratt and Motley Crue – seeps into Surviving and adds a punk-rock edge that has been missing from their recent records. There’s even a political slant to some of the music – Criminal Energy alludes to Donald Trump’s narcissism – while frontman Jim Adkins provides his trademark soaring vocals.
Surviving is unlikely to surprise fans of Jimmy Eat World. But it might make them fall back in love with them.
YUNGBLUD
YUNGBLUD’S riotous, hedonistic six-track release is a call to action for those of his generation. The rocky chaos, the provocative lyrics and genrebending style of the EP could easily be described as “Punk Lite”.
Highlights include the the clever, rock-pop track Parents, in which this feisty up-and-comer chants that “it’s alright, we’ll survive, ‘cause parents aren’t always right”, and the Linkin Park flavoured Hope For The Underrated Youth. The strongest track is Original Me with Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds, a song about self-acceptance and being authentic, a real 2019 hot-button topic.