Sam Fender Talks Inspiration Behind His Single ‘Dead Boys’ & How He Was Discovered

Introducing one of our MTV PUSH: Ones To Watch 2019 nominees: Sam Fender. The Newcastle born 22-year-old has been making music since he was 13 and whether it’s in a shed or the studio, what he cooks up is consistently as brilliant as it is unique.

On all the recent success including being chosen as one of our MTV Ones To Watch for 2019, Sam talked about what it all means to him: “It’s actually dawning on me that I’m being recognised for what I’m doing, which is mad.”

Watch our exclusive MTV PUSH: Ones To Watch 2019 interview with Sam Fender here:

Having a musical family growing up, Sam was able to discover at a young age that he wanted to pursue a career in music: “My brother was a drummer, and he was always like smashing the kit around when I was a kid, and my dad was like one of them old musicians, and he played in like loads of different bands in the 70s and 80s. Him and my brother were kind of like my main inspirations.”

On being discovered, Sam explained the craziness of how it came about: “I was literally just discovered in this like 400-year-old fisherman pub which I still like, love now.

I spent two years just writing and recording with my friends, and I had this one song that I wasn’t too sure about, because it was very, very different to the other stuff I’d be writing at the time, and it was ‘Play God’ which ended up being my first single.”

His first single, ‘Play God’ was featured on the FIFA 19 soundtrack. Here’s how it came into existence: “I recorded ‘Play God’ in a shed, I don’t know how we got it to sound as good as it did.”

Maybe one of his more personal tracks, ‘Dead Boys’, which is about the suicide some friends in his hometown, is Fender’s successful attempt at destigmatizing the conversation of male suicide.

Sam talks about the importance of the song to him: “With ‘Dead Boys’, these people coming forward and saying how it helped them deal with their loss or it helped them turn things around. Like, there was this one guy who came forward and said ‘I attempted suicide’, he turned his life around, succeeded in that and got his family and friends around him. Basically, this like grand story, and he ended it with this alternative version of the ‘Dead Boys’ lyrics, so it’s ‘All the dead boys in our hometown’ and he’s like ‘An alive boy from your hometown’. That was the first time I ever really went ‘Jesus, this music’s actually done a positive thing.”

To vote for Sam in this year's MTV PUSH: Ones To Watch, like the Instagram post below:

https://instagram.com/p/BsnVgsXhxU2/