‘Dead Boys’: Sam Fender’s defining moment

Posted On February 5, 2025February 5, 2025

Realistically, it was probably in 2019, when the release of ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ sent his rocketing to notoriety, that Sam Fender’s name was made. With that one song, he levelled up from small-scale venues to sell-out tours, booming beyond being a ‘one to watch’ to be the new favourite name in indie, all with one song. But, it was in 2018, with the Dead Boys EP that he defined what that name would mean and stand for.

Sam Fender is a true success story. When ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ caught the world’s attention, followed by the catch hit of ‘Will We Talk’ and spelling really success for his debut record, it seemed as if Fender was perhaps the only artist capable of challenging the pop charts with a guitar in his hand. A few years after the late 2000s and early 2010s indie boom had fallen into the landfill, Fender seemed to come along and reignite things. 

With the rock musicality of the British greats shown in his ability to pen stadium-sized hits, it merged with a very specific other influence that people often fail to investigate further. Fender is almost always discussed with reference to Bruce Springsteen. The North Shields-hailing musician has never made any secret of the major inspiration he takes from The Boss. And while now, that’s clear in the saxophone solos and chugging, anthemic rhythm of his hits, it’s also clear in Fender’s dedication to truly saying something.

For those listening close enough and not just being distracted by the big singalong choruses, something is being said across so many of Fender’s songs. Similar to the way that Springsteen managed to make a huge hit out of ‘Born In The USA, ’ which really, lyrically, is an anti-patriotic protest song, Fender is doing the same.

In his breakthrough hit, ‘Hypersonic Missiles’, he got references to the conflict in Gaza on radios around the world. In ‘Seventeen Going Under’, he unleashes a scream of desperation against poverty and the government’s role in hardship, singing, “I see my mother / The DWP see a number.” ‘Aye’ is perhaps his most obvious protest song as he repeats over and over, “I don’t have time for the very few / They never had time for me and you.” Even his newest hit, ‘People Watching’, while dealing with his own personal grief, shares a critique of the quality of care in the UK and the understaffed, underfunded services supposed to help.

It is clear that Fender is passionate about using his music for good as it feels like the protest song is what he does best, mastering it in the way that all the greats have before him as he almost covertly slips these huge messages into the mainstream songbook. But even way back in 2018, with his debut EP, he was doing that as Dead Boys set that intention from the start.

“Nobody ever could explain / All the dead boys in our hometown,” he sings in what is a starkly confrontational lyric, especially for a new, young singer. Launched alongside an incredibly cinematic and moving video, this career-opening track set the tone for the type of artist Fender would be: considered, vocal, engaged and unfaltering in his commitment to addressing issues within his work.

That entire debut EP was a clear display of his early commitment to his voice. ‘Dead Boys’ tackles the crisis of male mental health in underfunded Northern towns especially. ‘Spice’ is a tense look at the drugs, released right as his home city of Newcastle became the drug death capital of the UK with a 90% rise in fatality rates from 2007 to 2017. ‘Poundshop Kardashians’ feels like an immediate precursor to ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ as Fender shows his ability to weave between local and political scenes with ease, singing about Donald Trump as an “orange faced baby at the wheel of the ship”, the distraction of social media and normal people’s role in the greater story of the world. Closing out the EP, ‘Leave Fast’, similar to Springsteen’s own many odes about his hometown, is a song specific to the North East and the feeling that anyone with big dreams must run from it.

The EP was the curtain opening for Fender as it attracted early attention that he’d later level up with the shining spotlight of his first hit. But, that early project is a defining one, stating the position Fender is committed to holding with a promise that he’d use his work to say something that he’s still unholding today.

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