Six Minutes of Sound: an Ode to Hypersonic Missiles
Sam Fender live, April 2022
Mum had been talking about a guy called Sam Fender — she had a colleague at work who knew him in some vague capacity. She told me David was a ‘superfan’ and had tickets to his show. I shrugged it off, to me he sounded like another boy with a guitar. Nothing special.
Something caught my eye though, maybe it was the album cover, he’s someone you stop to look at. So I pressed play, I remember it so vividly. It’s funny really because it was a very mundane day up until that opening anthem. I was on the way home from maths tutoring and the train was going over the Thames, with a view of a city I had seen many times before. The ringing guitar and the powerhouse vocals felt like it could have stopped the train dead in its tracks. I felt something shift, I don’t think I’d ever felt so moved by a song before. It was very profound. Like a punch to the stomach, I felt almost winded. I guess it was my age — when you’re 16 and a good-looking boy is singing about something deep and bigger than you, you’re bound to be drawn to it.
Next came The Borders, to this day one of my favourite tunes. When the guitar riff started to play I was almost home. I’d never heard anything like it before, an almost 6 minute long belter, with hints of Springsteen’s guitar, Buckley’s soaring vocals and Chris Difford’s kitchen sink story-telling. It was a blend of all the music my dad had brought me up on, but in a new and original form. Heavily influenced but so clearly it’s own thing too.
I went on to inhale his discography at a record rate. In an embarrassingly fan-girly way, I wanted to know who he was, where he was from and what he was about. Newcastle was metaphorically put on my map.
It was beautiful really. I think when a piece of art captures you at that age, it makes you so keen to get going, it makes you realise that there’s a lot of life to live, and music to listen to, and stories to tell. It grabs you by the heart and makes you drunk on the idea that there are big feelings to be felt. Sometimes it can also make you frustrated because you realise you are stuck. I was in London, far away from Sam Fender land, studying for my GCSE maths.
In the summer after Hypersonic Missiles, mum and dad took me to Newcastle — we were looking at university options. I knew then and there that it was where I wanted to be. The city was totally buzzzing, just like Fender’s music. Absolutely charged with energy and excitement. I got myself through two hellish years of A-levels and left, North-East bound. In an indirect way, I’ve got Hypersonic Missiles to thank for that. It was the catalyst for a big decision I made, and of course, the soundtrack to many gruelling hours of revision.
Five years later, I write this listening to his third studio album, People Watching. The buzz his music initially gave me has softened into a murmur. Not because it isn’t still good, but because now Sam Fender’s songs feel like old and familiar friends. A comforting presence, as well as a time machine into my 16 year-old-self. That’s the glory of music that sticks with you. It grows alongside you, serving as a constant reminder of your own progress, whilst freezing sometimes even the most transient of feelings into 6 minutes of sound.
