Sam Fender is one of the lucky ones. Having won two Brit Awards in 2019 and 2022, performed to a packed Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2023 and reached the top of the UK charts with his 2021 album Seventeen Going Under, the 30-year-old – whose third album, People Watching, was released on Friday – is now a household name. But, as anyone from an ordinary, working-class place in the UK knows (Fender grew up in North Shields, just outside Newcastle), you make your own luck. And Fender’s success is a result of his talent for writing catchy indie bangers, into which he pours his heart.
But “pouring his heart” still feels like a rare sentence. Modern pop music is dominated by women. The likes of Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers render the depths of their soul into music we can “feel something” to, and it helps millions of women worldwide feel seen and heard, with topics ranging from friendship to the patriarchy. Yet solo male pop artists are few and far between – and even fewer cater specifically to a male perspective (Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi et al are not unemotional, but their lyrics are altogether more broad-brush). Where the Britpop of the late 90s and early 00s provided an outlet for ordinary men, now it feels as though it’s only in specific genres – like the poetic introspection often present in grime – that there is any exploration of masculinity. In pop, Fender is plugging a gap.
Fender’s male fans were keen to talk candidly about their relationship with his music. Jordan, 28, from Carmarthenshire, west Wales, first heard Fender live in 2021, taking a spare ticket to his gig from a friend. “When I got into the venue I noticed there were a lot of young men there, between 18 and 24, and a variety of types of men,” he says. “There were laddy lads in 1996 Newcastle United away shirts letting flares off during the first song, but you also had softer lads milling around on the sides.”
It wasn’t long before Jordan started to enjoy the music – but the click came during Fender’s most popular song, “Seventeen Going Under”. Lyrically, it’s the pièce de résistance of his discography so far: a message to Fender’s lonely, frustrated younger self, who was “Spiralling in silence”, “Always the f**kin’ joker”. Of course, this reflects a broader social crisis: working-class men grow up being told to “man up” and not to cry, and form friendships that consist of “banter” rather than emotional connection.
Fender is changing that among his fans. “There was a lot of emotion created in that moment,” says Jordan. “You could feel this energy all through the room, something vulnerable and special, people giving into the music, a sense of healing. I’d never heard people singing in such a raw way before. Hearing it echoed by an arena full of people was beyond empowering. The feeling has stuck with me.”
For Hassan, 18, the appeal is similar. He first listened to Fender in 2018, and immediately felt a connection to the raw lyricism. “Like a lot of guys I tend to keep my feelings to myself, but Fender’s music has helped me to realise that my problems are important too,” he tells me. “I find that listening to him allows me to be vulnerable, to open up when I need to most.”
Most of us are all too aware of the male mental health crisis. Men are three times as likely as women to die by suicide, and it is the leading cause of death in men under 50. Social isolation, a lack of emotional outlets and a scarcity of male role models are all contributing factors. I’m 28 and went to a school with roughly 900 students in an impoverished coastal area of Wales. Seven of my contemporaries have died by suicide – one girl and six boys. The statistics, both official and anecdotal, are bleak.
Fender addresses this issue head-on. His 2019 song “Dead Boys”, written after Fender lost a friend to suicide, ruminates on the disproportionate number of young men who take their own lives; on Spotify it’s the fifth most streamed song from his 2019 debut album, Hypersonic Missiles. Light, airy and cinematic, its stark lyrics are heartbreaking. “We close our eyes, learn our pain / Nobody ever could explain / All the dead boys in our hometown”, he sings.
“Dead Boys” particularly resonates with Hassan. “That song makes me not want to go to that extreme measure, which I know I could be capable of in times of struggle,” he explains. He’s not alone. In 2023 Fender told Radio X that, following a previous radio interview, a fan had emailed to say that he had been about to kill himself when he heard Fender talking about the song – and chose not to as a result.
David Boyden, a professional songwriter and producer for artists including Pearl and Ben Ellis, says that “from a songwriting perspective, what [Fender] does best in songs like ‘Seventeen Going Under’ is detail introspective images and scenes that situate listeners within the story, and then zoom out to talk about their broader significance using catchy refrains that universalise the subject.
“By looking at heavy issues through the personal impact they have on him, he invites the listener to do the same in a way that doesn’t feel patronising or preachy,” Boyden explains. “I wonder if this is partly why he’s managed to get through to so many people from different walks of life.”
Though his music is quintessentially British, Fender’s fandom extends beyond the UK. Like Jordan, 32-year-old Kurt also got into Fender in 2021, and Fender’s portrayal of masculinity resonates with him. But for Kurt, the societal circumstances that intersect with his identity resonate, too.
Kurt tells me he lives in “the rust belt of America”, an area “hollowed out” by neoliberalism and industrial decline: geographically and economically there are parallels with Fender’s home in north-east England. Kurt explains that he’s had personal struggles, too, linked to where he’s from. “Sam Fender has helped me understand where I’ve come from in every sense,” he tells me. “He helps me to cope with my circumstances and emotions, and has given me something to look forward to, to strive towards. He’s given me peace and hope.”
Among the songs Kurt cites as particularly comforting to him is 2021’s “Alright”: “Gotta fight it hand to hand,” goes the refrain, “We’re alright, we’re alright”. Kurt says that “the song is a reminder that I’m in a pretty good place these days. I’m sober and clean, I’ve processed a bunch of trauma, I have a safe place, I have my dog, I have my neighbour, and I’m actively engaged in local politics.”
This intersection of masculinity, mental health and social critique echoes what Boyden says about Fender’s ability to turn the personal into the universal. But it helps that these polemics and indictments are packaged in music that is softer on the ears than, say, Rage Against the Machine, The Clash or Anti-Flag. Instead, it has the soft expansiveness of bands like Beach House and The Temper Trap: Fender is bringing back the euphoric, emotive sounds of late 2000s indie, with more than a trace of The Maccabees in his vocal tone and big choruses – but firmly without the middle-class connotations that plagued many of those artists.
Spiralling out on drink, drugs and destruction is the harsh, unforgiving extreme of masculine fragility, and too often the reality of what it means to be a man in the modern world, where we still haven’t quite worked out how to be both vulnerable and male. There are few places where these everyday tragedies are written about so bluntly, so from the heart, as in the music of Sam Fender.
With its sonic tenderness and raw lyrics his music has become a safe haven – which itself creates a sense of community. For many of his young male fans, this is a profoundly healing combination.
People Watching is out now
