Sam Fender - The Shields Springsteen

What This is About

I am sixty five years old and I see so many people going on about how rubbish modern music is. It's true that our musical tastes are formed between the ages of fourteen and sixteen and I still love the music that I was exposed to at that age, though I also picked up a guitar and thought I could maybe make it, fifty years on I am still trying to teach myself though people say that my singing sounds a bit like Neil Young.

This started with me sharing Bruce Springsteen’s stunning cover of Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do)” on a prompt by my friend Lisa LaChapelle here and the next song that came up was Sam Fender’s “Seventeen Going Under”. That got me thinking of the similarities between Sam and Bruce which I have remarked on before and why I refer to him as The Shields Springsteen.

These are a few of the videos and performances that have made me draw that conclusion. If you haven’t heard Sam Fender and you are a Springsteen fan give a listen to all of these. In fact, give a listen to all of these if you just love great music that you will still be listening to in fifty years time.

The Borders

This was the first song of Sam Fender’s that really hit me. I had heard of him from friends who told me he was at various family gatherings and what a lovely lad he was. I heard this and was walking past Beyond Vinyl in Newcastle and they were taking orders for signed picture disk vinyl copies of his debut album “Hypersonic Missiles”.

The Borders really resonated with me, reminding me of things that I did and experienced as a teenager and was the reason I bought the album.

The title track is a wonderful take on potential Armageddon and the instrumental breaks with the saxophones could be Clarence Clemons and the E Street Band. Fender is his own man and this is a stunning piece of music that gets better with every listen.

Seventeen Going Under

Seventeen Going Under went viral on Tik Tok due fans using his lyrics to convey their personal tales of abuse and mistreatment.

The lines: "I was far too scared to hit him/But I would hit him in a heartbeat now/That's the thing with anger/It begs to stick around" were often played alongside before and after shots.

If Bruce Springsteen had been born in Shields around the millennium he would have written this. I think we all see instances of our own life in this song. What we did then and what we would do now.

I love that the video was filmed five or six miles from me.

I’m listening to the album now.

This is the live take on the song and again you can see why I call him The Shields Springsteen

Dancing In The Dark

This is Sam covering Bruce on his own and beautifully. The number of positive quotes on the video from hardcore Springsteen fans show incredible respect

He has this honest rawness in his voice that makes you live and breathe every single lyric and note as if it was your own, only ever seen it in springsteen himself

I bet the Boss just nods with consent if he hears this man doing his song. Man, love that clean Fender guitar sound.

As a big fan of Springsteen for 38yrs, I would never normally say any cover of his songs are any good. But yeah...... I actually do like this guys version

Concluding This With Do I Love You?

This is the song that kicked this story off. It is one of the most uplifting performances that I have ever seen or heard and is Springsteen showing that he respects and loves all music.