THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “If Sam Fender’s debut album, 2019’s Hypersonic Missiles, introduced a smart, streetwise young British songwriter with a penchant for euphoric, hard-hitting guitar anthems, it was 2021’s peerless Seventeen Going Under that sent the Newcastle artist stratospheric.
An acute observer who turns the mirror not only on the streets that he grew up walking, but to himself too, the record was a tough-talking but tender account of Fender’s childhood and finding his feet in the northeast of England. It’s also a classic coming-of-age story, marrying relatable family themes and broken friendships with colossal choruses.
The album’s subsequent success took Fender across the globe, playing to bigger rooms and wider stages. And having been invited to support the likes of Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stone, and Neil Young, Sam has since become not only an effortless festival headliner in his own right, but a stadium one as well. Seventeen Going Under reaped a clutch of awards, including BRITs, NMEs, an Ivor Novello, and a Mercury Prize nomination.
Now solidified as one of Britain’s most accomplished songwriters of his generation and the next, Fender returns with People Watching. If Seventeen Going Under was Sam’s coming-of-age record, People Watching is his next step forward — colourful stories and observations of everyday characters living their everyday, but often extraordinary, lives.
Sam produced his record alongside bandmates Dean Thompson and Joe Atkinson over two years, working first in London in 2023 with producer Markus Dravs, and then this year in Los Angeles with The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel, a musician Sam long admired.”
