Sam Fender reveals how he convinced The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel to produce ‘People Watching’: “One of my biggest heroes”
On the eve of releasing his highly-anticipated third album, People Watching, Sam Fender has explained how he convinced Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs to produce the record.
The upcoming record marks the follow-up to Fender’s highly-acclaimed second album Seventeen Going Under, released in 2021, which earned him a Mercury Prize nomination. However, the singer-songwriter has taken time to ensure his third album is a worthy successor to his last outing.
For his first two records, Fender worked closely with local producer Bramwell Bronte but chose to shake things up with People Watching by bringing Granduciel into the mix. Although Granduciel self-produces his material with The War on Drugs, he doesn’t typically work with other artists which isn’t due to a lack of demand for his services.
In a new interview on The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music 1, Fender said of the collaboration and his personal connection to Granduciel’s music: “I mean, it was an honour. I mean, he was one of my biggest heroes. The first time I heard Lost in The Dream, that record, I was really ill at the time and I was in hospital for a while, and that whole year that I spent kind of recovering, that record, it was the only thing I really listened to. So his music means a lot to me anyway.”
Fender explained that he was aware that Granduciel had never previously produced outside of The War on Drugs, but he thought it was worth trying anyway. He told Lowe: “We have a saying in the North East and it’s ‘shy bairns get nowt’, which means shy kids getting nothing. And I was like,'”I’m just going to have to get a hold of him and see if he’d be up for it.’ So I asked the label and I got a hold of him and I was on the phone and I was just like, ‘Look, I would love you to do this.'”
Their shared musical palette proved to be the dealbreaker for Granduciel, who was swayed by Fender’s Geordie charm, recalling, “And then we got talking, and we realised that we’re both listening to all the same stuff or just all the references, all the music that we love. It was like Tom Petty and The Replacements and Springsteen and Dylan and The Waterboys.”
Fender said the process of making the album once they arrived in the United States “all happened really quickly” which he said was a “great sign” of the partnership with Granduciel.
People Watching is set to arrive three-and-a-half years after Seventeen Going Under, but Fender is already thinking about his next album, adding, “As soon as it’s done, it’s like wiping the hard drive in your head and now I’m ready to do another one. I just want to get back in the studio, if I’m honest. I’ve got a load of new songs already.”
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