Sam Fender Interview: “This game instantly makes you more self-conscious.”
Look at this, I’ve got two lads tying my shoelaces. Full on made it, I have.”
It’s been 10 minutes since Sam Fender bounded into The Eagle in west London like a labrador on fizzy sweets. He’s already regaled everyone in the pub about a night out he’d had the week before with comedian Jack Whitehall and six-foot-eight former England footballer Peter Crouch.
Crouchie was on it, but he kept ruining the vibe, worrying about how angry his missus was going to be.”
The unlikely trio had been on the UK’s biggest talk show, The Graham Norton Show, that evening, with Fender performing his latest and biggest single (to date), Hypersonic Missiles.
Now he’s wriggling around on a pub stool as two stylists try and pin him down and get him in the first look of the shoot. It probably goes with the territory. He’s one of the country’s most talked-about new musicians. No wonder he’s restless.
OUTFIT CREDITS | T-shirt: Acne Studios @ Mr Porter, Jeans: Frame Denim @ Mr Porter
Standing at over six foot, Fender has the broad shoulders of a rugby player, the sculpted cheekbones of a male model and the arm-swinging swagger of a lad-about-town. He’s chatty and friendly, bouncing between topics like a pinball machine, punctuating particular points with a punchy, “Do you know what I mean?”. You can imagine him slinging an arm over you in the smoking area of a gloomy club and asking you how your night’s going.
But within 20 minutes, the livewire has tired. His eyes have started to dim, his shoulders have started to slump. He’s battling a sore throat but also – presumably – the kind of motion sickness that only comes when your career takes off at 100mph.
The past year has seen the 25-year-old put in a monumental shift. Just last November he was playing to 300 at the Omeara nightclub in south London, eventually playing three nights such was the demand. Non-stop touring, a Critics Choice award at the Brit Awards (past winners include Adele and Sam Smith) and down-to-earth, acerbic media appearances have since shot him into mainstream consciousness.
