“Look out!” Steve Van Zandt posted on his Facebook page. “Here comes Sam Fender. You’re gonna hear from him!”
Having Little Steven in your corner would be a confidence boost to any young songwriter but for Sam Fender it must be extra special. He admits to being obsessed with Bruce Springsteen’s music and sites Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town as being huge influences on his music and one of the motivating factors for him entering the world of music.
Sam Fender first came to my attention a little over a month ago. I saw him plastered all over my Facebook feed and completely ignored it, as I do with any online ad. It wasn’t until I heard him referred to as “the Geordie Springsteen” that I decided to listen to him and see if that bold claim could hold true.
Translation for my non-UK friends: Geordie = a person from the Tyneside area of North East England.
Being compared to Springsteen is a great compliment to a new artist as well as something of a hinderance. Brian Fallon of the Gaslight Anthem has never made his love of Springsteen a secret but has expressed occasional frustration at not being able to escape from his shadow (although his solo album Sleepwalkers was a radical departure and is worth checking out!). Springsteen himself had to fight a similar battle after his first two albums came out in 1973 and Columbia tried to market him as “The New Dylan”. This turned off many fans of Dylan and, similarly, I was skeptical of Sam Fender when I heard the “New Springsteen” comparisons. Nevertheless, I was curious and so I bought his album Hypersonic Missiles (his only album thus far) and listened to it with great care. Notice the similarities in album covers; the far away stare and barebones backgrounds.
The first thing to say is that I was pleasantly surprised by the album. I think it is a very good first album and some songs impressed me greatly. It seems to walk the line between commercial appeal (Number 1 in the UK Albums Chart) as well as mature writing. Sam Fender is still young (only 25) but is writing in a way that no other artist his age is. This post will not be a review of the album (other than to say it’s very good and I recommend it highly) but an examination of Springsteen’s influence on his writing and his sound.
I’ve provided the relevant videos so you can take a listen and hear the comparisons for yourself.
The opening track of the album is the title track which tells of a romance in an apocalypse. Straight away and it is already sharing themes with “Jungleland” or even “Incident on 57th Street”. Vocally, Fender has more in common with Brandon Flowers of The Killers than with Springsteen, but half way through the song we get a musical break which is heavily influenced by “Dancing in the Dark” and even features a Clarence Clemons-inspired sax solo.
References to kids being bombed in Gaza also shows that Fender is not afraid to face political questions either, even if he admits to having no answers. He doesn’t yet have the political insight or convictions that Springsteen does but that may well come in time. This is most evident in the track “White Privilege” which may be the most controversial song on the album. He takes a stab at “them old cunts” in government who are unable to negotiate their way through problems like Brexit, social injustice and economic instability, as well as downcrying social media for making everybody think “I wanna be anybody but me”. He laments how “Nobody talks to each for fear of different opinions” and how the right wing press are playing on people’s fears.
The song ends with a particularly divisive few lines: “The patriarchy is real, the proof is here in my song/ I’ll sit and mansplain every detail of the things it does wrong/ ‘Cause I’m a white male, full of shame/ My ancestry is evil, and their evil is still not gone”. Personally, I think there is a hint of irony to what he is saying here since this kind of extreme shame and “smug liberal arrogance” is mocked earlier in the song with the line, “I’m not entirely sure this nit-picking can count as progression”.
The next track “The Borders” feels like it was influenced by Nebraska. It tells the story of two boys growing up together and parting under ambiguous circumstances that have a sinister undertone. This is immediately comparable to “Highway Patrolman”. The song features an absent father-figure as well as a tyrannical one. The theme of fathers and sons is probably Springsteen’s most enduring one. “The Borders” has the soul of “My Father’s House”, the emotional intensity of “Independence Day” and the burning fury of “Adam Raised A Cain”.
Those two songs are the most obvious nods to Springsteen’s work, as far as I can see it. Listening to the album as a whole you can easily find signs of his influence in every song but I won’t list them all here for fear of repeating myself too much and belabouring the point.
Fender’s live performances are passionate and exhilarating, though he hasn’t built a big enough catalogue yet that would allow him to own the stage with as much energy and conviction as The Boss. He has, however, been roundly praised for his truthful depictions of working class people fighting to escape their world in his songs. Like Bruce, Fender grew up in a relatively poor family and lived in a relatively poor area. He saw struggles and the emotional toll these struggles take on a person’s mind. His song “Dead Boys” deals with the theme of depression and suicide in young men. It is a harrowing song which has an almost conspiratorial chorus: “We close our eyes and learn our pain/ Nobody ever could explain/ All the dead boys in our hometown”. I use the word conspiratorial because it is implied that those in charge (read: those who are not poor and underprivileged) could do something to stop this crisis but choose not to. The lower-classes are ignored and left to die because of the circumstances they were born into. Doesn’t that sound like the very thing Springsteen has been writing about for four decades?
To be clear, I’m not recommending that you listen to this album simply for the Springsteen references. Sam Fender is not a tribute act and there is enough of his own personality in these tracks to make him stand out as a much-needed breath of fresh air in the music industry. There are more commercial songs on here such as “Will We Talk?” and “Call Me Lover”, but even they are written with a maturity and a wit that is sorely lacking in most pop songs.
So, while Sam Fender has not even come close to reaching a level where he can be accurately compared to Bruce Springsteen, his future looks very promising and I’m excited to see how his style develops. There is plenty here for Springsteen fans to enjoy but his blending of influences is what makes this album stand out. There are hints of Oasis, Joni Mitchell and The Killers strewn throughout but the key to the album’s success is that Fender is, ultimately, singing in his own authentic voice.
Just like Bruce.
Bonus: He’s not afraid to pay tribute to his hero, as is proven by the excellent (if predictably chosen) covers below.
Talk About A Dream 