by Ali Lewis
Sam Fender creates such a relaxed ambience on the Zoom (never the easiest of feats) that it feels a bit like talking to one of your mates. He’s lounging casually on a sofa in a t shirt and shorts as he talks us through some of the tracks on his much-awaited new album “Seventeen Going Under”. He’s obviously not feeling 100% (“I’ve got man flu – it’s the worst disease on earth.”) and is still recovering from performing at Reading and Leeds Festival less than a week previously. He keeps punctuating his words with fits of coughing. Probably the last thing he wants to do today is speak to a load of journalists on Zoom. Yet he’s humorous and engaging, regaling us with stories. He’s a natural entertainer, but then he’s been on the circuit and winning local talent competitions since his teens. Four days later he’ll be forced to postpone two sold-out shows at Glasgow Barrowland for the fourth time due to Covid. The shows were originally supposed to take place in March 2020, but he’s used to these kinds of setbacks by now.
Fender is impossibly likeable. It would be so easy for someone in his position – model-good looks, incredibly talented, still in his mid-20s with a hugely successful and award-winning #1 debut album in the UK, legions of devoted fans – to be insufferably arrogant. There are plenty in Fender’s shoes who absolutely are. If there’s one word that sums Sam Fender up, though, and has probably saved him from the pitfalls of ego, it’s his authenticity. Intelligent, self-aware and disarmingly honest, his music speaks to young people who don’t see their experience reflected back at them by his many, more socially privileged contemporaries. It’s reminiscent of the connection that Oasis found with so many in the 1990s, but with a millennial sensibility and far greater emotional and musical complexity.
Fender has spoken movingly before about feeling like an outsider – a bit “thick”, too working-class- next to some of his British contemporaries he’s often compared to like George Ezra, James Bay, Tom Grennan, even Ed Sheeran. Not for the first time though, he’s being far too hard on himself. It’s the sense of rootedness in his music, the feeling that every word he sings stems from hard-won life experience, that raises him above his contemporaries. He has always been incredibly honest in his music. His debut album, 2019’s “Hypersonic Missiles”, explored toxic masculinity, male mental health, suicide, feeling trapped in low paid jobs and escaping through getting smashed at the weekend. It offered a sharp contrast to the more commonplace debut album themes: fancying girls, hitting on them and having one-night stands. He’s hardly the first to draw upon some of these issues but they tend to be explored rather later in life by most artists. In many ways, Fender gives the impression of being an old soul, but with the insecurities of a teenager.
Much is riding on “Seventeen Going Under” ahead of its release date. In the UK it’s expected to be a huge hit. He hopes that in Europe and the U.S., where he’s less well known, this follow-up will change that. It’s been a challenging album to make. Fender has often drawn on the inspiration of people-watching, spinning tales out of the colloquial experiences of people he’d meet in the pub or out and about in North Shields. Deprived of the opportunity to do this during lockdown, he had to turn inward instead. It’s telling that “The Borders” – an exploration of his relationship with the boy who bullied him in high school – is his favourite song on “Hypersonic Missiles”. It’s this narrative that he delves further into on “Seventeen Going Under”. He feels the album as is “a lot more personal”, revealing that he wrote a mind-boggling 60 songs for it and ultimately selected the most personal ones for the final cut. Helped by the therapy he sought on the back of finding fame, he “started unpacking lots of things.” This album, he says, is “about self-esteem and coming of age”. He reflected on his teenage years, the insecurities he had that led him to feel unworthy and “how those insecurities affected my romantic relationships and made me a shit boyfriend”. He’s earnest, painfully self-aware. At one point he tells us he “hit 25 and realised I know fuck all about anything”. The humour is always there, another huge key to his appeal. He jokes about undercutting the inherent sadness in his songs with a “big happy sax”. He talks about his obsession with referencing Star Wars. There’s something incredibly endearing about the way his demeanour changes from laid-back to half-anxious during the Zoom, sitting forward or with arms-folded as we listen to the album. At one point he breaks into a bit of an arm-waving dance despite himself. It’s obvious how much all of this means to him.
“Seventeen Going Under” is a more ambitious as well as more personal album than his debut. It answers the critics who found his debut too one-dimensional, too samey in its twelve guitar-driven rock tracks. It still feels like harsh criticism. Fender has always been open about being hugely influenced by Springsteen but the under the noise of the big guitars, he’s always elevated the hidden voices, the experiences of the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised of society. This is one of the qualities that sets his music apart. Nevertheless, there are musical as well as emotional layers on display on this album that lay bare Fender’s obvious talent and push his music in different directions. The standout title track and lead single has already dominated radio airplay and entranced festival goers in the UK this summer. It’s a microcosm of Fender’s appeal: a Springsteen-inspired, 80s-steeped anthem, lyrics seething with suppressed anger and sadness. It will resonate with anyone who’s grown up or lived in a community where power is wielded and won with fists: “See I spent my teens enraged / Spiralling in silence / And I armed myself with a grin / Cause I was always the fuckin’ joker”.
Current single “Get You Down” is a guitar anthem in the same vein musically and thematically as the title track. Its lyrics are clearly inspired by the therapy sessions he mentions: “Catch myself in the mirror / See a pathetic little boy / Who’s come to get you down”. It’s heartening to see Fender’s many lad fans shouting and bouncing along to these songs at festivals. If he didn’t exist, you almost feel that parents and teachers and youth workers would have had to make him up. He feels like the perfect role model for young men in our times.
Fender has always been political, opinionated – another quality marking him out from a number of his contemporaries. He’s maintained that here in the pulsing anger of songs such as “Aye”, a fierce critique of the current political climate in Britain and its failure to represent the interests of the majority of the population. “I don’t have time for the very few / they never had time for me and you”, he spits. “Paradigms” is a tale of toxic masculinity which builds to an emotional peak with its layers of piano, string and percussion, then wrongfoots us by ending quietly with just Fender’s voice and a single guitar. It’s another example of his advancing songwriting. “No one should feel like this” he repeats in its closing moments. At points it even recalls 1990s Tori Amos.
And then there’s the breathtaking “Long Way Off”. This is a particularly striking and ambitious track about the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol building following Joe Biden’s victory late last year. It’s clear, listening to him talk about the process of creating it, how proud he feels. His pride is justified: thematically and musically it’s possibly the grandest song he has ever written. Evocative of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”, its 164 audio tracks (including a string orchestra, synths, drums and backing vocals from emerging pop singer and friend L Devine) combine to create something “sounding like a Bond theme”. It’s an interesting comparison. Fender offers a perfect foil to the classic masculine hero offered by Bond, a different and ultimately much more inclusive possibility of male identity.
And then there’s the breathtaking “Long Way Off”. This is a particularly striking and ambitious track about the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol building following Joe Biden’s victory late last year. It’s clear, listening to him talk about the process of creating it, how proud he feels. His pride is justified: thematically and musically it’s possibly the grandest song he has ever written. Evocative of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”, its 164 audio tracks (including a string orchestra, synths, drums and backing vocals from emerging pop singer and friend L Devine) combine to create something “sounding like a Bond theme”. It’s an interesting comparison. Fender offers a perfect foil to the classic masculine hero offered by Bond, a different and ultimately much more inclusive possibility of male identity.
You wonder if his dad, who he sings about on the track that follows, is a Bond fan. If “Long Way Off” is his grandest musical experiment, “Spit of You” is Fender at his most bare and emotionally resonant. He tells us a poignant story about speaking with his dad about toxic masculinity and his dad asking him anxiously if he had passed “that” on to his son. “I said, oh no, you didn’t,” he tells us. His obvious reluctance to hurt his father or blame him for behaviours unconsciously modelled is desperately moving. He says the song is “a declaration of love” for his dad, the gut-wrenchingly honest lyric “I can talk to anyone. I can’t talk to you,” undercut by jangly guitar and the “big, happy sax”. It’s one of the most beautiful tracks on the album, a quietly devastating portrayal of the damage that the patriarchal “Boys Don’t Cry” narrative has wrought for generations of men.
“Seventeen Going Under” has many quieter moments like this. Fender has obviously learned that he doesn’t need to make a big noise to find emotional resonance with his audience. On “Mantra”, a gentle, slow-paced piece of Americana which explores fame and identity, he even sounds a bit like Joni Mitchell but with added “happy sax”. The piano-led closing track “The Dying Light” also recalls Mitchell. It’s soaring, beautiful, emotional, and thematically seems to sum up Fender’s journey over the course of this album and its predecessor. He’s reaffirming his own self-worth and his purpose, to give voice to those whose voices are never heard or were cut off too soon: “For Mam and Dad and all my pals / For all the ones who didn’t make the night.”
Fender has spoken of this album as closing a chapter of sorts on his younger self and his experiences, all of his youthful insecurities. It’s a remarkable achievement, but you sense that for the young man sitting anxiously on the sofa studying our reactions, it still won’t be enough. He’ll continue to drive himself on, never quite believing himself to be good enough. For him it’s both a blessing, anticipating what a third album might deliver, and a curse. You hope that he’s genuinely found more self-belief: if anyone’s earned it it’s surely him.