Sam Fender Talks New Album People Watching, Learning to Say No — and Why He Feels 'Guilt' for His Success (Exclusive)

• Sam Fender opens up about the reaction to and the inspiration behind his latest album People Watching
• The British singer-songwriter is in the midst of a North American tour
• Fender is also playing the Coachella music festival

A working class hero is something to be — just ask Sam Fender.

The singer-songwriter’s anthemic tales of woe out of his hometown in northeast England have made Fender, 30, a bona fide superstar across the pond, where fans relate, in varying capacities, to songs about everything from life in public housing to growing suicide rates among young men in Britain. He’s topped the UK Albums chart thrice, taken home a handful of BRIT Awards and sold out venues that seat upwards of 52,000 people.

But Fender is ready now for his biggest challenge yet: cracking North America.

“We’re flying tomorrow, and it’s all systems go,” he says over Zoom from his London home, ahead of a slew of overseas tour dates. “I’m really excited. I always kind of went to the places where we knew we were going to get a good return. So now it’s like, we’ve done that, and we’re like, ‘Right, we need to f---ing make America work now.’”

Fresh off the February release of his third album People Watching, Fender is poised to make a splash when he touches down stateside. First up is a series of tour dates along the West Coast (seven in total), plus a performance slot at Coachella, where he’ll play both Saturdays (April 12 and 19) of the annual festival.

It’s been three years since Fender last played a show in America, on a tour he cut short to tend to mental health struggles and burnout (“It’s exhausting feigning happiness and wellness for the sake of business,” he said in a statement at the time).

“Things got so big so quickly, there were so many opportunities coming in. And because of the way I was brought up, I kind of felt like if I stopped it’s all just going to disappear,” he explains now. “So I felt the need to say yes to everything all the time, and then I ended up just burning myself out. Now I’m better at saying no, you know? I know my limits now, which is cool. With the growing confidence of doing these tours, I'm getting more excited."

Getting to know himself better, both as a person and a performer, has been a long time coming for Fender, who released his debut album Hypersonic Missiles in 2019 after being discovered by his now-manager in the local pub where he worked.

He was born and raised in the town of North Shields near Newcastle, the younger of two sons to a mom who was a nurse and a dad who worked as an electrician by trade but also taught children with behavioral issues.

Growing up in an area burdened by poverty and drugs had a profound effect, and to this day, his upbringing forms the basis of many of his songs. “Our Jackie navigates through the penury / He lost his job again in January,” Fender sings on the new song “Chin Up.” His 2021 breakthrough hit “Seventeen Going Under” ripped Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions, who hounded his mom after she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and struggled to keep up with the bills. “I see my mother, the DWP sees a number,” he cries in the song’s stirring bridge.

“[Songwriting] was therapy before I could afford therapy,” Fender says. “It’s the first cathartic practice that I had.”

Though the life he now lives in London is a far cry from the one-horse town of his youth, Fender — whose band is almost entirely composed of childhood friends — remains keenly in tune with the world he left behind; on the People Watching standout “Crumbling Empire,” he sings of his parents’ blue-collar struggles and the friends who haven’t made it out, musing, “I don’t wear the shoes I used to walk in / But I can’t help thinking where they’d take me in this crumbling empire.”

“That’s the thing, I don’t feel a disconnect,” he says of his younger self. “I feel like I’m the exact same person. I feel I’m still that kid a lot of the time, and I think that being that kid doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to the life that I have now… There’s an element of guilt that comes with [success]. There’s the fact that most of the people that I know back home are still very much struggling to f---ing pay their bills and feed their kids.”

Fender admits he still carries “a little bit of a chip” on his shoulder, mainly in the company of “extremely posh people” who have patronizing comments to share on his strong Geordie accent.

“I think I’m actually almost a bit too tethered to home and to my youth and my upbringing. It’s hard not to [be]. There was times where me and my mother were both unemployed,” he says. “We didn’t have anything. It was brutal. We were always happy and we always survived, but there was times where there were elements of embarrassment and shame. And I think that stays with you no matter what.”

He used to feel more of a responsibility to use his songwriting as a way of standing up for issues he believed in, but now recognizes that music should come from a feeling, and not for the sole purpose of protesting.

“When I was 22, I thought I f---ing knew everything, and I was crusading against everything all the time,” he says with a laugh. “And the older I get the more jaded I’ve become. There’s plenty of things I would love to talk about, but not all of them I can confidently articulate.”

Still, People Watching is largely social commentary, and he’s plenty good at articulating the ways in which the system has failed him and the people he loves. 

He says the month since releasing the record has been “amazing,” especially since he’s made it past the stress of release week.

“Half the time it’s either blowing up your ego or completely destroying your self-esteem,” he says of choosing not to pay attention to what the critics think of his music. “The only thing that matters is the fans, and of course my musical peers. Fontaines D.C. think it’s great. Elton [John] thinks it’s great. It’s f---ing fine then. My dad likes it, so, great.”

Just as with his first two albums, Fender is the only songwriter credited on all People Watching tracks, making him something of an anomaly on today’s charts: The song currently sitting at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 has 11 co-writers; the one before that had five. He praises storied songwriting partnerships like that of John Lennon and Paul McCartney but is certain that writing solo is the only way he’ll work. Still, he doesn’t rule out co-writing for another project, or perhaps a duet. (His dream partner? The late Tom Petty).

“I’m too much of a f---ing control freak anyway,” Fender quips of keeping his pen to himself. He did, however, tap The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel to help produce People Watching, for which he recorded around 50 songs over the last three years in London and Los Angeles.

Fender turned 30 last year and in entering a new decade found himself in something of an existential crisis, wondering just what his purpose was. There was a part of him that thought maybe he should become a father amid his search for a raison d’être, though he quickly dismissed that as selfish.

He may not have all the answers — at least not yet — but he does know one thing: it’s always been about the music, and no amount of attention or success or fame will change that.

“I’ll do my gigs, and I love making music with my friends, and that’s what I did it for initially. I never ever did it for anything else,” he says. “The main reason for doing it is because you love music. Everything else that comes with it can f--- off.”