Sam Fender

If Sam Fender’s debut album, 2019’s Hypersonic Missiles, introduced a smart, streetwise British songwriter with a penchant for euphoric, hard-hitting guitar anthems, it was 2021’s peerless Seventeen Going Under that sent the Newcastle artist stratospheric. An acute observer, Fender turns the mirror not only on the streets he grew up walking, but on himself too. The record is a tough-talking but also tender account of Fender’s childhood. It’s also a coming-of-age story, marrying relatable family themes and broken friendships with devastatingly colossal choruses. Seventeen Going Under is already a record that has taken Sam right across the globe, playing to bigger rooms and wider stages, whilst reaping a clutch of awards too (including BRITs, NMEs, Ivor Novellos, and a first Mercury Prize nomination). Having headlined his first festivals in the UK in the Summer of 2022, sold out all 45,000 tickets of his most recent headline performance in London, and over 110,000 tickets for two hometown stadium shows in Newcastle, Sam Fender has almost inadvertently become one of Britain’s most celebrated and successful musicians of a generation.