HOWAY THE LAD:
The Inexorable Mr. Sam Fender
The Geordie's songs are cutting, haunting, witty, raucous and wholly unapologetic. Perfect -- if anything, the more honest he becomes, the more the world comes together to listen.
In England, only failures become heroes. It is an inescapable fact. Gazza, Amy Winehouse, Morrissey, Ian Botham – there is a charming whimsicality in their stories ultimately being ones of potential unfulfilled. All great, to be sure – but they could have been greater. The greatest. Therein lie the charm and the whimsy; their flaws and successes attract us in equal measure.
Sam Fender is different. Make no mistake; he and his songs represent the same irreverence to life that defines all English heroes, combined, of course, with intensely unsanitised opinions. Hypersonic Missiles is an angst-ridden, anthemic flick of the finger to the conservative one percent. Dead Boys is a living mausoleum; a tenderly potent paean to male suicide that Fender freely admits has stolen the lives of close friends. Seventeen Going Under defiantly mourns Fender’s past, deftly alluding to his life threatening sickness and his fibromyalgia-suffering mother’s harassment by social services, while containing the raw emotion turned TikTok sensation, “I was far too scared to hit him / But I would hit him in a heartbeat now.” Aye returns to political angst, but intentionally refuses to side with either aisle. Arguably, this is more of a rally cry for unity than any flag-waving Harry Styles has ever done. As Fender explains in a recent interview, “Because of the polarity between the left and the right, I don’t feel I have an identity with politicians on either side…with a lot of the left – I don’t want to sound like Piers Morgan when I say this – I feel like there is too much nitpicking and stupid fights, especially online. But I hate the Tories with a passion [too].” Howdon Aldi Death Queue, to leave behind the despair, is just mad fer it, innit?
His songs have the electric genius that peppered the output of Gazza and co., but it is what Fender represents that will set him apart as the greatest of his generation. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is right -- we are in the obscene age. We lack emotional intelligence. We are passionate, but only when Instagram is watching. We prosletyse puritanical devotion to the prevalent ideology – a distorted version of actual liberal thought – and decry an argument of nuance as violence. Adichie is right. We are sophists preaching sophistication, terrified of being wrong.
In our obscene age, Fender is unprecedented because he is unafraid. Lyrically, his songs are littered with cutting emotion born from cutting experiences – he has lived a life, as the saying goes. Most people from the Northeast of England have. Sonically, Springsteen comparisons exist for good reason, but a Fender song is in turns haunting, aggressive, soaring and memorably melodic. He softly mourns the verses and enchantingly wails the choruses, always with an undercurrent of caustic disbelief at the state of things. He is in rarified air – like Oasis, Fender makes one nostalgic for an age that never was, perhaps never could be, but somehow feels like an innocent home. He is not successful despite his flaws, but because of them, almost begging the listener for dialogue -- listen to Fender’s take on the world and reply, respond. Make things better by making things happen.
In an age where Brexit is the deciding factor in marriages, Sam Fender’s catchy melodies, intelligent lyrics, unabashed propensity for honest opining and yearning for unpolarised dialogue unifies. The Geordie is a wailing, angry, tender as the night is dark troubadour whose combines joy, anger, sadness, nostalgia and hope into his sound and lyrics. He unifies people through his songs, but also through recognising that they are different. No matter. Come listen. Come sing. Come talk. It is in this way that England, a starkly divided England, is Fender’s. And so is the world.