I don’t use this word lightly, but Sam Fender really is underrated. Aside from hearing one song on TikTok, as is how I am often introduced to artists, I had no expectations of what Fender’s music sounded like or ideas of what to expect. But what I found was an artist whose music takes sonic cues from other rock acts that have come before, but his writing and his perspective is uniquely his own.
It’s very hard to make a living making art if you don’t already come from wealth, this we know. That’s why we’re obsessed with rags to riches stories, and feel cheated when an artist downplays their wealthy backgrounds or parental connections, which leads to accusations of being an “industry plant” or a “nepo baby.” But paradoxically, the few authentic working class stories that do exist in music are rarely highlighted. In the genre of country music, the shiny rhinestone cowboy music of Garth Brooks or the trap beat laden songs of Florida Georgia Line outsold the kind of authentic Bluegrass music that you’d hear from neighbors’ front porches. And in the UK, outside of Joe Cocker, Oasis, and maybe Arctic Monkeys, few bands from the North of England get much press, or when they do, are taken seriously. Which maybe explains why Fender’s sophomore record Seventeen Going Under about coming from a working class family in Sheffield is a record that was too quickly skipped over, but doesn’t make it any less of a shame.
When it was released in late 2021, it ranked well amongst UK music publications, even making NME’s number 1 album of the year. And maybe because Fender has since come out saying that the creation of this album was “rushed” and that he’s taking his time on the next one to get it perfect, but the good will this album generated quickly faded away and it seems rarely brought up again since its release. It also that especially American audiences didn’t really catch on to this record, despite the themes of it being about the English North fit very closely to themes often discussed about the American South.
I really would have thought this album would have been more widely celebrated and discussed often as a recent album that demonstrates a step in a musical direction that many are lamenting is long gone. For all those jeering about Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter or Beyonce, or any number of pop singers that they claim don’t play “real instruments” or have too many songwriters, here’s a self-written album full of “classic rock ambition” that takes great influence from the greats like Bruce Springsteen. Just like they were celebrating Greta Van Fleet as the saviors of rock’n’roll, where are they now for Sam Fender?
Posted from: https://emmachristleywrites.medium.com/we-need-more-artists-like-this-1739cd7e2a0d