There's a moment in "Seventeen Going Under" where Sam Fender's voice cracks — just a little — and if you're from a northern town that's had the life squeezed out of it, you feel that crack in your chest. I heard it first in my dad's car, on the way to town. He didn't say anything. He just turned it up.
Sam Fender is from North Shields, which is about as far from Liverpool as you can get while still being in the same conversation. He's a Geordie lad who writes songs about what it's like to grow up poor in a place the government forgot. His dad was a musician, his mum worked in a school. He got his first guitar at eight, played in pubs as a teenager, and wrote songs about the things he saw — lads his age drowning in addiction, zero-hour contracts, the dole queue getting longer every year.
His first album, Hypersonic Missiles (2019), was good. A bit shouty, a bit raw, like a kid who's just discovered he can scream and people will listen. It went to number one because Britain recognised something real in it. The title track is about the paranoia of growing up under the shadow of nuclear weapons. That's not pop. That's politics with a chorus.
But Seventeen Going Under (2021) — that's the one. Every song on it is about being young and broke and angry and hopeful all at the same time. The title track is about Sam at seventeen, getting beaten up, working dead-end jobs, watching his mates fall apart. But it's not miserable — it's defiant. It's the sound of someone who refused to lose.
He won the Brit Award for Best Rock Act. He headlined Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage. He sold out arenas. But the thing about Sam Fender — the thing my dad taught me to spot — is that he never stopped sounding like he came from North Shields. He never polished the edges off. He never let London make him polite.
He's got a saxophone player in his band. Proper northern soul. Bruce Springsteen called him the real deal, and Springsteen doesn't give that out to just anyone.
When I listen to Sam Fender, I hear my dad. Not because they look alike or sound alike. But because they both understand the same thing — that music isn't about being clever. It's about being true. And Sam Fender is true in a way that makes your chest hurt.
You'd love him, Dad. You already do.