July 15th 2022 – Sam Fender takes to the stage at Finsbury Park in London in front of forty five thousand fans, off the back of performances at summer festivals across the UK, including Glastonbury just a month before. One of the biggest stops on the tour for his second album, Seventeen Going Under (2021), it became his biggest ever headline show at the time, marking the massive success of his non-stop rise since he started releasing music in 2017.
After an hour of his trademark energetic and folk-rock influenced sound, Sam sits down at the piano before the encore (While expressing how much he hates encores) to play one of his newest songs, ‘The Dying Light’, and makes a powerful statement –
“This is dedicated to all of our friends who didn’t make the night”
Much of Sam’s work in his music is a compelling tribute to those lost to suicide, and his work is very much a campaign for suicide awareness and prevention itself. He’s not afraid to talk about his own struggles, and there are a number of examples where he uses his music and his ever-growing platform to discuss and destigmatise mental health issues.
Looking back to his debut album, Hypersonic Missiles (2019), Sam describes his experiences with male suicide in his song ‘Dead Boys’. The song opens with Sam’s haunting and reserved vocals, building up over the course of the song to an angry and overwhelming sound. The chorus reads:
“We close our eyes, learn our pain
Nobody ever could explain
All the dead boys in our hometown”
It’s a warning from Sam about how dangerous it is when men keep their struggles to themselves, as he refers to how unexpected the suicides in his home town were. With ‘we close our eyes, learn our pain’, it can be seen as Sam’s own experience with hiding his emotions. In an interview with NME on the song, Sam spoke about the ‘toxic masculinity’ that makes men feel like they will be shunned if they speak to others about their mental health. He referred to it as such an ‘out of date idea of how a man is supposed to conduct himself’ and described it as ‘what kills men, genuinely.’
Sam goes into more personal detail with this on the second album, through ‘Spit Of You’, a song about him and his dad. Sam sings about how that toxic masculinity got in the way of their relationship – ‘I can talk to anyone, I can’t talk to you’. As he then wrote on Instagram, the song comes from ‘how we both struggle as blokes to communicate the way we feel to each other without it becoming a stand off.’ It’s this honest acknowledgement of what creates the stigma around talking about mental health for men that Sam uses as the first step to challenging the stigma. It’s what the purpose of songs like ‘Dead Boys’ is to him –
“If it gets to one person and they feel like they should reach out and talk to somebody, then it has done a good job.”
Sam opens up about his critical view of himself with harsh honesty in ‘Good Company’, from the deluxe version of the second album. The lyrics move back and forth between Sam’s highs and lows:
“Sometimes I don’t really wanna be here
Other times I feel like I could take over the world”
The song itself is about a relationship, and how he believes he only shows his partner the worst of himself. However, it can also be read as a reminder that the tough periods are not permanent, and to not be too hard on yourself. In an interview with The Guardian in 2021, he spoke about how the suicide of a friend the year prior had affected him –
“I lost a good friend to suicide last year, and I’m not going to lie to you – over lockdown, and even before, I was in that sort of place myself. I had moments where I was so low that I thought about it.”
But, he went on to affirm that he was getting through it –
“I’m still learning, I’m still in the trenches at the moment, but I feel like there’s a clear goal in sight.”
To have that honesty and open discussion about his struggles is no-doubt an encouragement for so many to do the same – to not be afraid to ask for the help that you need to get through the low points.
Overcoming those low points is what ‘The Dying Light’ is built upon. It’s clear to see why Sam chooses it as the song to close out the main part of most of his sets, because the message behind it is perhaps his most important. In a track-by-track interview for the second album on Radio X, Sam described the song as a ‘sequel to Dead Boys’. After losing another friend since the first album, Sam draws attention to how big the issue of male suicide still is:
“And those dead boys are always there
There’s more every year”
It follows ‘Dead Boys’ in recognising those tragedies so that the people we’ve lost are not forgotten and we acknowledge the issue that needs to be tackled, but the tone of ‘The Dying Light’ turns into one of hope rather than despair in the second half of the song. Sam sings ‘Maybe I can use a hand’, and he marked this in the interview as the turning point for the narrator in the song, where they realise that they can get through the low point and need help to do so. Sam described the feeling of the song as a ‘triumph’ over your struggles, about overcoming them and ‘not surrendering to the darkness’ that has taken so many. When speaking to The Guardian, he also dedicated the song and what it stands for to the people who his music has helped –
“All them people who have messaged me, that guy who’s stopped himself from killing himself – they’ve realised there is purpose to this, and there’s beauty to be had.”
Overall, Sam Fender is an incredible force when it comes to championing the open discussion on mental health that undoubtedly saves lives. As Sam shouts the final verse of ‘The Dying Light’ in unison with forty five thousand fans at Finsbury Park, it is the summary of what his music is for, why he keeps going, and why we should all keep going as well:
“But I’m damned if I give up tonight
I must repel the dying light
For Mam and Dad and all my pals
For all the ones who didn’t make the night”
Help is available. Here’s a link to a range of support services, including 24-hour helplines, for whenever you need to talk to someone about how you feel.
NME Interview, 2018 – https://www.nme.com/news/music/sam-fender-dead-boys-lyrics-meaning-interview-mental-health-male-suicide-2368006
The Guardian Interview, 2021 – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/25/sam-fender-interview-leftie-slur-working-class-towns
Radio X: Seventeen Going Under Track by Track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmBwCzsFlB8
Sam Fender on Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/artist/6zlR5ttMfMNmwf2lecU9Cc
Ben Parr, 25th January 2025