Sam Fender feared he’d never sing again after a vocal cord haemorrhage.
The ‘Seventeen Going Under’ hitmaker recalled feeling like he’d been stabbed in the throat when he experienced a surge of pain during a performance at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Middlesbrough in 2019 and was convinced it was “a proper nail in the coffin” for his career.
He said: “I did that gig and my voice . . . it was like glass, like someone was stabbing us in the throat when I was trying to sing ‘Hypersonic Missiles’, which is a high song.
“It was a nightmare. I came off stage, I couldn’t talk and that was when it was like, boom. Done.”
After seeing a doctor, Sam was told he’d suffered the haemorrhage and also had a polyp on his vocal cords, so he was forced into “full silence” for a month to help his voice heal.
He added on the ‘Hide And Speak’ podcast: “I literally shut the f*** up for a month. I locked myself away – like full silence for a month – in my mum’s flat and just literally switched off.”
Meanwhile, the BRIT Award winner recently confessed he relishes telling his former classmates to “f*** off” when they ask him to play at their weddings.
The ‘Spit Of You’ singer felt out of place at a sixth form college in a wealthy part of Whitley Bay, North East England, and while his fellow students used to make fun of him then, but they are keen to ask him for favours now he’s a star, and he has no problem with turning them down.
He said: “There was a corner of the common room that they used to call peasants’ corner, and that’s where I used to sit.
“But they’re all asking us to play their weddings now. And I subsequently tell them all to f*** off. It’s wonderful.”
The 28-year-old musician is already planning his next album following the success of chart-topping ‘Seventeen Going Under’ and is set on cracking America.
Asked what his goals for 2022 are, he said: “Write and record another record, tour that record. Go out to America, start doing stuff out there because we’ve not really scratched the surface of the States.
“It’s flying over here and it’s starting to fly in Europe.”