Sam Fender has announced new single ‘People Watching’ and teased upcoming album news.
- READ MORE: Sam Fender live in Newcastle: a star-studded Toon celebration
The North Shields singer-songwriter singer shared a snippet of the song earlier this week, and has now told fans they can expect it in full on November 15.
Taking to Instagram this morning (November 8), Fender thanked fans for “being patient”, and shared that the single artwork featured an image “from down the road in South Shields” shot by the late Tish Murtha.
“It’s an honour to be able to use her art to help tell the story of the album,” he said, before teasing that there was “more album news” coming next Wednesday (November 13). You can pre-order the single CD, which features B-side ‘Me And The Dog’ here, and pre-save the track here.
It was on August 3 that he first debuted ‘People Watching’ live, along with another unreleased song, ‘Nostalgia’s Lie’, with both set to appear on his long-awaited third album.
Last month, Fender teased that the album is finished and “mastered”, having shared a series of photos and videos from the studio on Instagram, and revealed he had input from The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel when working on the record.
While Fender left a gap of two years between his debut album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ and ‘Seventeen Going Under’, there’s going to be a gap of at least three between ‘Seventeen Going Under’ and his third album.
But he admitted earlier this year that he “rushed” to complete his last album. In an interview on Sky Arts’ Johnson And Knopfler’s Music Legends, Fender shared: “The third one we started rushing and I thought, ‘No, we have got to take the time’.
“I want to do the best I possibly can. I’d rather it be late and great than early and shite. What we have got so far I am absolutely over the moon with but I want to give it that bit more time and more thought.”
Speaking to NME in September 2022, he shared some more thoughts on the album, describing his new music as “very pretty” and having a strong “singer-songwriter” vibe – adding that he wasn’t planning to write music just to fill massive venues.
“If I try and force myself to write stadium songs, we could end up fucking it I think,” he explained. “Instead, I want to write about the stories that I have and the place that I’m mentally at in my life at this point. And I’ve had a lot to write about.”
He continued: “I’m not living in my mum’s flat anymore, and that’s where a lot of the songs were written from the last record. But I’m still in [North] Shields, you know, I never left. I’m still friends with all the same people. All my family and all my friends are still all in the same boat, so there’s a level of guilt that comes with it when you feel like things are going good, because I’ve still got loads of pals who are living in dire straits. It’s always there.”
As for ‘Seventeen Going Under’, which was named Best Album In The World and Best Album By A UK Artist at the BandLab NME Awards 2022, NME gave it four stars, calling it a “bruising” second album and saying: “If ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ was the sound of a young boy kicking out at the world, ‘Seventeen Going Under’ sees Fender realise that it can kick back a lot harder, and he counts every blow and bruise.
“But he seems to have found that time passes and that most wounds – even the deepest – will eventually heal, if he can allow them to.”
