Sam Fender was stunned when he discovered his song ‘Dead Boys’ helped save the life of a suicidal man.
The 25-year-old English singer/songwriter penned the track – which features on his debut album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ – about a friend who took his own life and this year he was told the story of fan who was considering ending it all only to be pulled back from the brink by Sam’s lyrics.
In an interview with Radio X, he said: "There was a guy who was on his way to kill himself and he was driving his car. He was going to drive his car off the road and I was on [the radio] and doing a chat about ‘Dead Boys’ and singing a song and [the presenter] got an email six months later and I got tied into the email as well, and it was basically saying that he heard what was on the radio and because of that chat on the show he pulled over, cried his eyes out, went home to his wife and said he needed help … Purely because there was just this one moment where someone acknowledged … or he just heard something that changed his mind. Sometimes that’s all it can take. Just one little thing that can snap you out of that moment I think."
Sam go the chance to meet the fan at one of his concerts and he came away from their conversation feeling as though his music could make a profound difference in people’s lives.
The ‘Will We Talk?’ hitmaker said: "He came to a show six months later. I met him and I had no idea what to say to him. Obviously I’m not a doctor and I’m not a therapist, and I’m never going to overestimate the clout of my job. I’m a singer/songwriter. I’m primarily here to entertain people. That is my job … But there’s these tiny little moments in my career that have gave it a little bit more clout than I ever thought it would have. And for a split second it wasn’t this self-serving vacuous job that it can be, because it can make you feel so self-centred."
"There’s moments like that that make you think, ‘You know what, maybe this has more meaning to it than I thought it did.’ "
Sam was reluctant to even include ‘Dead Boys’ on his LP because he was worried people might think he was "capitalising on a tragedy".
But he decided he had to be on the record after he played it to his team and it led to some of them coming forward with their own experiences of suicide.
Sam explained: "I wrote that song purely as a reaction to losing a mate to suicide … For ages I didn’t know whether to release it or not and then I just kind of played it to my internal team kind of opened up about it. And people who I worked with who I never knew had experienced suicide would be like, ‘My dad took his life when I was a kid.’ It kind of just highlighted that not many people talk about it, that there’s still a lot of stigma involved."
Sam Fender’s song Dead Boys saved a fan’s life
