Sam Fender’s music offers a vision of masculinity that is complex, conflicted and deeply human

By the end of June 2025, Sam Fender will have played four stadium shows to nearly 250,000 people across the UK, with three of those in his native north east. With three albums and over 2 billion streams, his music has earned widespread acclaim. Yet, Fender is no ordinary rock star.

His songs provide a powerful connection to place and a lens through which to reflect on social, cultural and political dynamics. Deeply rooted in north-east England, Fender’s lyrics reference his hometown of North Shields and use local vernacular.

As a researcher of the links between popular culture and politics who lives less than a mile from his hometown, I find his work particularly powerful in the way it mobilises emotive issues at scale. Fender explores themes such as masculinity, poverty and everyday struggle, forging a direct emotional connection with his audience.

This connection is reinforced by his activism. Fender supports local food banks, the Teenage Cancer Trust, and campaigns for poverty reduction and men’s mental health.

To my mind, this work is not performative celebratory activism, but is grounded in his own community and personal experiences. This combination of commercial success rooted in honesty, vulnerability and community action led to him being named “freeman of North Tyneside” in May 2025.

Boys and girls are together facing an uncertain world. But research shows they are diverging when it comes to attitudes about masculinity, feminism and gender equality.

Social media, politics, and identity all play a role. But what’s really going on with boys and girls? Join The Conversation UK and Cumberland Lodge’s Youth and Democracy project at Newcastle University for a discussion of these issues with young people and academic experts. Tickets available here.

Fender’s teenage years were marked by personal challenges, including his parents’ separation and his mother’s fibromyalgia. These experiences, and the state’s failure to support those in need, are captured in his song Seventeen Going Under (2021): “I came home and you were on the floor / Floored by the letters and the council rigmarole.”

His latest album, People Watching (2025), continues this critique. The title track, inspired by the death of a close friend in a care home, laments:

The place was fallin’ to bits

Understaffed and overruled by callous hands

The poor nurse was around the clock

And the beauty of youth had left my breaking heart.

For Fender, these stories reflect a Britain in decline. In Crumbling Empire, he sings: “Road like the surface of the moon / A Detroit neighbourhood left to ruin.” The song further critiques a society that fails to honour those who have given everything:

My mother delivered most the kids in this town

My step-dad drove in a tank for the crown

They left them homeless, down and out

In their crumbling empire.

His message is clear: hard work, even by midwives and war heroes, no longer guarantees dignity or reward.

Fender’s most poignant observations are rooted in his locality. In Nostalgia’s Lie, he sings: “These streets break my heart / There’s pain unfurling and desperate yearning / For all my friends who are gone.”

North Shields has some of the highest rates of child poverty in the UK. According to the North East Child Poverty Commission (March 2025), 31% of children in the region lived below the poverty line between 2021 and 2024.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

In this context, Fender places mental health – especially male mental health – at the core of his work, made even more powerful by his honesty about his own struggles.

Dead Boys reflects both personal loss and the epidemic of male suicide in North Tyneside: “We close our eyes, learn our pain / Nobody ever could explain / All the dead boys in our hometown.”

In Something Heavy, he adds: “My friends reached for the rope and tied / Oh, God, how can we keep missing signals?”

Fender’s engagement with mental health is deeply personal. He wrestles with confusion, despondency, and his own sense of self-esteem: “Though I am a soundboard to some / With myself I am not so forgiving” (Last to Make it Home), and “Sometimes I wanna die, sometimes” (Paradigms).

In Good Company, he confesses: “Sometimes I cry until there’s no sound,” and in Arm’s Length: “Do you have to know me, know me, inside out / I’m selfish, and I’m lonely.”

Yet, like many artists, Fender feels guilt that success has uprooted him. In Wild Long Lie, he reflects: “Oh, I’ve got so much pain here, yet so much love / But it’s drownin’ every inch of my soul.” He questions whether he can still authentically raise these issues now that fame has distanced him from his past. As he puts it in Crumbling Empire:

I’m not preaching, I’m just talking

I don’t wear the shoes I used to walk in

But I can’t help thinking where I’d be

In this crumbling empire.

Fender’s work helps us understand political and social phenomena by reflecting unfolding events. His songs can be seen as giving life and voice to what political theorist Michael Shapiro calls an “aesthetic subject”.

The characters in his songs, whether autobiographical or imagined, give voice to communities which are so often ignored. They allow exploration of the structures of power that deny working-class people opportunities, contributing to mental health crises, suicide and spiralling drug use within those communities.

Even though Fender acknowledges he no longer walks in the same shoes, his songs still speak truth to power. They give voice to experiences that are often ignored and expose the increasing struggle of everyday life in the UK and beyond.

He also offers a nuanced reflection on masculinity. Fender challenges traditional ideals – rational, authoritative, emotionally restrained – while rejecting simplified portrayals of men as weak or unstable. His songs reveal a masculinity that is complex, conflicted and deeply human.

While Fender is not alone in using music for social commentary, what sets him apart is his ability to channel the spirit of his local community to explore universal themes. His work critiques the failures of contemporary capitalism to provide dignity, respect, and cohesion – issues that resonate deeply amid today’s cultural, political and economic challenges.