Latest news with #SamFender
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Man runs from Leeds to London to see Sam Fender
There are a number of methods of travelling to a concert, but the chances are, the average music fan hasn't considered an ultra-marathon. That's how Andy Hobson, 34, is planning to reach the London Stadium next Friday. He is running from his hometown of Leeds to London to see Sam Fender in concert. His journey will start outside the Brudenell Social Club on Saturday, and will end on the 6 June in the Olympic Park in east London, where Fender is performing. The 252 mile (407km) journey will be in support of the Music Venue Trust, a charity which acts to protect UK grassroots music venues, and which Andy believes he "owes his life to" during struggles with his mental health. Andy, who works in the emergency services, was not originally planning the marathon fundraiser when he bought tickets to see Fender play in London, as part of his People Watching tour. He said: "I bought the ticket and instantly I thought, I wonder if I can run from Leeds to London?". Andy is using the challenge to raise money for grassroot music venues "to help make a difference to that sector". "I loved going to music venues, especially small independent ones, when I was struggling with my mental health," he said. "On a particular day, when I wasn't feeling too great, I would book a tickets for the most random gig. "I knew I would go into those places and feel a sense of community, so I wanted to create a fundraiser to help make a difference to that sector - which I felt like, at the time I was struggling, I owe my life to it" he said. In addition, Fender is donating £1 from every ticket sale sold for the UK dates to the charity, something which "reinforced" Andy's decision. During the week-long journey, Andy will start and end each leg at a different music venue, including the Leadmill in Sheffield which recently announced it is leaving its current venue. Friends, music and podcasts will power Andy through the challenge, which he plans to break into 10-hour running shifts. He said the financial outlay he has spent on equipment will be another incentive to complete the challenge. "Once I get stuff like the clothing and branding - being a Yorkshire man - it gets me thinking, I have paid for it now - so I have to do the job now. I have got to see it through. "Even in the difficult bits, I will think, I have paid for this top - I have to do it now!" So which Sam Fender songs will provide Andy with inspiration on his journey? "Seventeen Going Under will feel like such a big song. But recently, off his latest album, Nostalgia's Lie has been quite a good song for me. "It feels very relevant to this journey. I'm sort of looking towards my future self, if that makes sense?" Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North. Why Leeds' independent venues are struggling Indie bar announces closure after 16 years 'I like to think that me running is saving someone's life'
BBC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Man runs from Leeds to London to see Sam Fender in concert
There are a number of methods of travelling to a concert, but the chances are, the average music fan hasn't considered an how Andy Hobson, 34, is planning to reach the London Stadium next Friday. He is running from his hometown of Leeds to London to see Sam Fender in journey will start outside the Brudenell Social Club on Saturday, and will end on the 6 June in the Olympic Park in east London, where Fender is 252 mile (407km) journey will be in support of the Music Venue Trust, a charity which acts to protect UK grassroots music venues, and which Andy believes he "owes his life to" during struggles with his mental health. Andy, who works in the emergency services, was not originally planning the marathon fundraiser when he bought tickets to see Fender play in London, as part of his People Watching tour. He said: "I bought the ticket and instantly I thought, I wonder if I can run from Leeds to London?". Andy is using the challenge to raise money for grassroot music venues "to help make a difference to that sector"."I loved going to music venues, especially small independent ones, when I was struggling with my mental health," he said."On a particular day, when I wasn't feeling too great, I would book a tickets for the most random gig."I knew I would go into those places and feel a sense of community, so I wanted to create a fundraiser to help make a difference to that sector - which I felt like, at the time I was struggling, I owe my life to it" he addition, Fender is donating £1 from every ticket sale sold for the UK dates to the charity, something which "reinforced" Andy's decision. During the week-long journey, Andy will start and end each leg at a different music venue, including the Leadmill in Sheffield which recently announced it is leaving its current music and podcasts will power Andy through the challenge, which he plans to break into 10-hour running shifts. He said the financial outlay he has spent on equipment will be another incentive to complete the challenge. "Once I get stuff like the clothing and branding - being a Yorkshire man - it gets me thinking, I have paid for it now - so I have to do the job now. I have got to see it through."Even in the difficult bits, I will think, I have paid for this top - I have to do it now!" So which Sam Fender songs will provide Andy with inspiration on his journey?"Seventeen Going Under will feel like such a big song. But recently, off his latest album, Nostalgia's Lie has been quite a good song for me."It feels very relevant to this journey. I'm sort of looking towards my future self, if that makes sense?" Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Sam Fender 'lands huge deal to be the face of an iconic sports brand' as he prepares to kick off UK stadium tour
Sam Fender has reportedly signed a huge brand deal with Adidas to help promote their products while on his People Watching tour. The Geordie singer, 31, has reportedly been busy filming scenes with the Newcastle United team outside St James' park earlier this week. Sam will be joining Oasis stars Noel and Liam Gallagher, who recently also shot a new ad campaign for the sports brand, which will make up part of a video campaign shown to fans inside the stadiums on their reunion tour. A source told The Sun: 'Sam has signed a big deal with Adidas to be part of a cool campaign with the Newcastle squad. 'It'll coincide with his tour, which kicks off at the London Stadium on June 6, before he plays three more sold-out shows at St James' Park. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. 'They got in 120 extras to act as fans for the video, which I'm told will include Sam hobnobbing with some of his favourite players. 'It's a really clever move by Adidas to get not only the Gallagher brothers on board but Sam too. It's going to look epic.' MailOnline have contacted Sam's representatives for comment. Sam has finished a recent run of tour dates across Europe and headline BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend last week before taking a short break ahead of hitting stadiums in the UK in June. It comes after the Seventeen Going Under hitmaker swore live on stage at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend Show on Saturday, before his long-awaited headline set was hit by technical difficulties. The Geordie headlined at the music event in Liverpool, closing out the Saturday with confetti and fireworks. And despite wowing with his vocals, at one point Sam became flustered, with an onlooker telling MailOnline that he apologised to the crowd after being hit by 'technical difficulties.' Sam's set contained crowd favourite hits including Seventeen Going Under and Hypersonic Missiles which had fans chanting into the night. A source told MailOnline: 'The crowd was buzzing as Sam came on to headline following the likes of Ed Sheeran and the Sugababes earlier in the day. 'But during the first few songs he had a number of technical difficulties. Sam continued to mess around with his mic stand through a number of songs and was spotted looking to the side of stage awkwardly. 'Sam was apologetic to fans for the problems and admitted he was s***ing himself performing the huge gig. 'However he powered through and put on an incredible performance.' Other stars at the event included Ed Sheeran, who made a surprise appearance where he performed a new song inspired by his $100 million copyright trial. The singer wrote the track after revisiting an old phone during the lawsuit over his hit Thinking Out Loud. He had been accused of copying Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On but was cleared in court in 2023. Now, taking to the stage at the Liverpool-based festival, Ed opened up about the inspiration behind his new song Old Phone before performing it for the first time in front of a crowd. Referring to his copyright trail, told the crowd: 'The judge ordered me to give up my old devices to the other lawyers for them to go through all my text messages and emails and photos and stuff like that. 'And in that process I switched on a phone that I had not looked at in 10 years and it was like looking into the past and it was conversations with people who had passed away. He continued: 'There was arguments with an ex-girlfriend, there was, you know, text messages and pictures from people that I haven't seen or spoken to in, in 10 years, and I wrote this song about it called Old phone.' Ed's performance was announced just moments before he surprised the crowd with his unexpected appearance. He told fans he chose to perform on the New Music Stage because it was the only one he hadn't sung on yet. A source at Big Weekend told MailOnline: 'Ed came on as a surprise guest kicking off the opening act on Saturday lunchtime, I've never seen festival goers swarm a stage so quickly. 'He played a number of his hits and also included some of his new songs which the crowd the loved. 'Ed explained the meaning behind his one new song where he opened up about his court case and how finding old phone was the inspiration.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Sam Fender doesn't want to be your working-class hero
I've annoyed Sam Fender. I've quoted his own lyrics at him, from TV Dinner, a standout on his new album People Watching – 'Hypothesise a hero's rise and teach them all to then despise/It is our way to make a king, romanticise how they begin/Fetishise their struggling, while all the while they're suffering' – and asked him if he feels his working-class story has been uncomfortably commodified by the industry machine. Suddenly, he's fearing some sort of tabloid ambush. 'I mean… I don't know,' he says. A long silence ensues, then eventually: 'I don't really want to make a f---ing headline about me being like 'oh, I've felt exploited' because I'm happy doing what I'm doing. But I also think… Hang on, give us a second... What's this for anyway? Who do you write for?' In the UK, Fender has been Britpop's chosen son since 2021, when Seventeen Going Under marked his viral breakthrough. A stirring anthem of proletarian disillusionment, the song recalled Fender's youth growing up below the poverty line in the council estates of North Shields, a shipyard town near Newcastle; it also seethed at the struggle his mum, a nurse forced out of work due to fibromyalgia, endured at the hands of bureaucratic indifference ('I see my mother/The DWP see a number' he sang). It led Fender to a prestigious Ivor Novello win for best song, and album of the year nods in the Mercury Prize and Brit Awards. This February, he released the long-awaited follow-up People Watching, which added a War On Drugs-esque chug to Fender's signature Bruce Springsteen-via-The Killers sound, thanks to production from Adam Granduciel (a Fender hero), and the skyward trajectory continued. At home, where he's now the sort of pop star who breaks chart records set by Harry Styles, has Elton John on speed-dial, and can secure celebrities like Andrew Scott and Adolescence star Owen Cooper for his music videos, Fender's also become a de facto spokesman for the working class. In interviews, he gets questions that set him railing against wealth disparity, the left's abandonment of the underclass, and the structures that make a music career inaccessible to anyone not from private-school privilege. He's the sort of pop star who earns glowing write-ups in the NME and the World Socialist Website. Media have christened him 'Geordie Springsteen', a descriptor both illustrative and pejorative depending on who wields it. If uninvited, it's hard to avoid when your songs feature lines like: 'My old man worked on the rail yard/Betting his trade on the electrical bars/It got privatised, the work degraded/In this crumbling empire' (from People Watching 's Crumbling Empire). Three albums in, though, it's become a nuisance to his art. It's perhaps understandable then, that when a writer starts whiffing around his politics in an interview, Fender's haunches go up. Does he get criticism for talking openly about politics? 'I mean, yeah, do you?' Fender replies. Well no, nobody cares about a thing I say, and I have the analytics to prove it. Has he had bad experiences with the press over it? 'O'course I have, all you've gotta do is Google my name and find all the things that look salacious. I could tick them all off for you,' he says. Does he feel pressure to be a voice for the working class? Fender laughs heartily and I've set him off. 'No, I don't… Ah f---, I don't know. Sorry, I guess I'm battling with that myself at the moment,' he says. 'People bandy around these f---ing sayings – 'voice of the working class', 'voice of a generation' – I hear this f---ing shit all the time and it's ridiculous. I'm not f---ing Bob Dylan. I'm not Bruce Springsteen. I'm Sam Fender. All I'm doing is me f---ing songs, writing about my lived experience, the people I know and what's going on in me hometown. It's just a couple of good tunes, that's all and nothing more.' You can sense the frustration of a young artist trapped in a persona foisted upon them. Or, at the very least, the pressure of expectation from a culture craving their next rock 'n' roll saviour. Right now, Fender doesn't want the job. 'Half the songs I've released I can't f---ing stand because I wrote them when I was a kid!' he says. 'They're not 'songs of a generation' and I'm not 'the next Bruce Springsteen'. I'm just a kid – well, a f---ing 31-year-old man – who's writing songs! I just don't feel comfortable when anybody brings in 'working-class hero'. It doesn't have to have that weight. I'm sorry, I'm probably not in the best state to be doing this interview. Probably gonna brutalise us in the print, hey?' Fender's drinking beers in the back of a pub in North London when we Zoom, enjoying some rare downtime between tours and, significantly, off the back of a jaunt to break America that included a slot at Coachella and high-profile press in publications like the Los Angeles Times ('At home he's a hero. Is America next for Sam Fender?' went that headline). 'I want to break America, who doesn't? That's your f---ing life sorted if it works. But I told my manager we need to make sure we're looking after the territories that have supported us so far,' says Fender, whose arena tour hits Australia in November. 'We'll go to America and we'll lose a lot of money, but Australia is blowing up for us right now so of course we're coming to Australia. That's where the fans are, and it's a big amount of people. It's happening there, so let's go.' The States should be simple enough, I tell him. Jump on a tour with, say, Zach Bryan, a simpatico heartland rocker, and hit those endless small towns where fans can't help but empathise with Fender's hard-won story. The people will eat it up. Look at me, I add, talking like I know what I'm on about. 'Sure, maybe you should f---ing manage us,' Fender jibes. In the meantime, he's focused on writing. He's already begun work on album number four, which is, I remind him, traditionally the 'artist's album'. At this point, you take no notes. 'It's funny you say that because I literally said, I am going to make this album and no c---'s gonna f---ing hear it 'til it's done. Once it's done, they can have it and if it sells, it sells. If it doesn't, I don't care.' Loading He's torn between two intriguing angles. 'There's some stuff I've been making that's a little more thrashy, a bit more Replacements. And then some stuff that's really stripped back, just pure folk songs. We'll see what happens. But it's going to be a vinyl with 10 f----ing songs on it and if people like it, then that's wonderful and if they don't, then fine. But it will be what I want.' In the midst of such chaos, this working-class hero has surely earned the right.
The Age
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Sam Fender doesn't want to be your working-class hero
I've annoyed Sam Fender. I've quoted his own lyrics at him, from TV Dinner, a standout on his new album People Watching – 'Hypothesise a hero's rise and teach them all to then despise/It is our way to make a king, romanticise how they begin/Fetishise their struggling, while all the while they're suffering' – and asked him if he feels his working-class story has been uncomfortably commodified by the industry machine. Suddenly, he's fearing some sort of tabloid ambush. 'I mean… I don't know,' he says. A long silence ensues, then eventually: 'I don't really want to make a f---ing headline about me being like 'oh, I've felt exploited' because I'm happy doing what I'm doing. But I also think… Hang on, give us a second... What's this for anyway? Who do you write for?' In the UK, Fender has been Britpop's chosen son since 2021, when Seventeen Going Under marked his viral breakthrough. A stirring anthem of proletarian disillusionment, the song recalled Fender's youth growing up below the poverty line in the council estates of North Shields, a shipyard town near Newcastle; it also seethed at the struggle his mum, a nurse forced out of work due to fibromyalgia, endured at the hands of bureaucratic indifference ('I see my mother/The DWP see a number' he sang). It led Fender to a prestigious Ivor Novello win for best song, and album of the year nods in the Mercury Prize and Brit Awards. This February, he released the long-awaited follow-up People Watching, which added a War On Drugs-esque chug to Fender's signature Bruce Springsteen-via-The Killers sound, thanks to production from Adam Granduciel (a Fender hero), and the skyward trajectory continued. At home, where he's now the sort of pop star who breaks chart records set by Harry Styles, has Elton John on speed-dial, and can secure celebrities like Andrew Scott and Adolescence star Owen Cooper for his music videos, Fender's also become a de facto spokesman for the working class. In interviews, he gets questions that set him railing against wealth disparity, the left's abandonment of the underclass, and the structures that make a music career inaccessible to anyone not from private-school privilege. He's the sort of pop star who earns glowing write-ups in the NME and the World Socialist Website. Media have christened him 'Geordie Springsteen', a descriptor both illustrative and pejorative depending on who wields it. If uninvited, it's hard to avoid when your songs feature lines like: 'My old man worked on the rail yard/Betting his trade on the electrical bars/It got privatised, the work degraded/In this crumbling empire' (from People Watching 's Crumbling Empire). Three albums in, though, it's become a nuisance to his art. It's perhaps understandable then, that when a writer starts whiffing around his politics in an interview, Fender's haunches go up. Does he get criticism for talking openly about politics? 'I mean, yeah, do you?' Fender replies. Well no, nobody cares about a thing I say, and I have the analytics to prove it. Has he had bad experiences with the press over it? 'O'course I have, all you've gotta do is Google my name and find all the things that look salacious. I could tick them all off for you,' he says. Does he feel pressure to be a voice for the working class? Fender laughs heartily and I've set him off. 'No, I don't… Ah f---, I don't know. Sorry, I guess I'm battling with that myself at the moment,' he says. 'People bandy around these f---ing sayings – 'voice of the working class', 'voice of a generation' – I hear this f---ing shit all the time and it's ridiculous. I'm not f---ing Bob Dylan. I'm not Bruce Springsteen. I'm Sam Fender. All I'm doing is me f---ing songs, writing about my lived experience, the people I know and what's going on in me hometown. It's just a couple of good tunes, that's all and nothing more.' You can sense the frustration of a young artist trapped in a persona foisted upon them. Or, at the very least, the pressure of expectation from a culture craving their next rock 'n' roll saviour. Right now, Fender doesn't want the job. 'Half the songs I've released I can't f---ing stand because I wrote them when I was a kid!' he says. 'They're not 'songs of a generation' and I'm not 'the next Bruce Springsteen'. I'm just a kid – well, a f---ing 31-year-old man – who's writing songs! I just don't feel comfortable when anybody brings in 'working-class hero'. It doesn't have to have that weight. I'm sorry, I'm probably not in the best state to be doing this interview. Probably gonna brutalise us in the print, hey?' Fender's drinking beers in the back of a pub in North London when we Zoom, enjoying some rare downtime between tours and, significantly, off the back of a jaunt to break America that included a slot at Coachella and high-profile press in publications like the Los Angeles Times ('At home he's a hero. Is America next for Sam Fender?' went that headline). 'I want to break America, who doesn't? That's your f---ing life sorted if it works. But I told my manager we need to make sure we're looking after the territories that have supported us so far,' says Fender, whose arena tour hits Australia in November. 'We'll go to America and we'll lose a lot of money, but Australia is blowing up for us right now so of course we're coming to Australia. That's where the fans are, and it's a big amount of people. It's happening there, so let's go.' The States should be simple enough, I tell him. Jump on a tour with, say, Zach Bryan, a simpatico heartland rocker, and hit those endless small towns where fans can't help but empathise with Fender's hard-won story. The people will eat it up. Look at me, I add, talking like I know what I'm on about. 'Sure, maybe you should f---ing manage us,' Fender jibes. In the meantime, he's focused on writing. He's already begun work on album number four, which is, I remind him, traditionally the 'artist's album'. At this point, you take no notes. 'It's funny you say that because I literally said, I am going to make this album and no c---'s gonna f---ing hear it 'til it's done. Once it's done, they can have it and if it sells, it sells. If it doesn't, I don't care.' Loading He's torn between two intriguing angles. 'There's some stuff I've been making that's a little more thrashy, a bit more Replacements. And then some stuff that's really stripped back, just pure folk songs. We'll see what happens. But it's going to be a vinyl with 10 f----ing songs on it and if people like it, then that's wonderful and if they don't, then fine. But it will be what I want.' In the midst of such chaos, this working-class hero has surely earned the right.
