Sam Fender - People Watching

Sam Fender is a singer and songwriter from the town of North Shields in England. He won the Brit Award for Best Rock/Alternative Act twice. His most recent album is called People Watching, and just like his first two albums, it went to #1 on the UK album charts. To help produce the album, Sam enlisted Adam Granduciel, the singer and frontman of the band The War on Drugs. For this episode, I talked to Sam, and his bandmate Joe Atkinson, about the title track from People Watching, and the long journey that it took to get made, from Sam’s kitchen, to the Hollywood Hills, to Abbey Road.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by Tidal. If you're an artist or if you know somebody making music, you should know about Tidal Upload. It's a way to share and sell music without the usual barriers. You can upload your music directly to Tidal at no cost. You decide how you want to release it. You can share it publicly with Tidal listeners, or you can keep it private until you're ready. Or you can sell your music directly through Tidal Upload. Your music will also be considered by Tidal's editorial team for their playlists. And if your track is selected for their spotlight program, you'll get $1,000 bonus and you'll be on one of their marquee playlists. And now, Tidal has dropped its platform fee to 0%, which means you keep more of your earnings there than on any other platform.

• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit tidal.com/songexploder to create an account and start uploading your music for free. That's tidal.com/songexploder for zero platform fees on every sale. Your music, your earnings.

• 1:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 2:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Sam Fender is a singer and songwriter from the town of North Shields in England. He won the Brit Award for Best Rock and Alternative Act twice. His most recent album is called People Watching, and just like his first two albums, it went to number one on the UK album charts. To help produce the album, Sam enlisted Adam Grandisil, the singer and frontman of the Grammy-winning band The War on Drugs. For this episode, I talk to Sam and his bandmate Joe Atkinson about the title track from People Watching and the long journey that it took to get made, from Sam's kitchen to the Hollywood Hills to Abbey Road.

• 3:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Could I just ask you each to introduce yourselves?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm Sam Fender.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  I'm Joe Atkinson. I play keyboards for Sam and help him in the studio with the production and stuff like that.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yes, and we've known each other for ages.

• 3:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah. When did you first meet?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Probably 14.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  We used to be in rival bands.

• 3:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  When you were 14 years old?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. If there was ever like a local band competition, it would always be like us two pitted against each other. Because where we live, North Shields, it's like, I love it. It's the best town in the world, but it's not connected to the music industry or anything, you know, it's a fishing town.

• 4:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Back in those days, was your relationship mainly about playing music together? Or did you hang out otherwise as well?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  I think with us, it's like, we all grew up together, you know?

• 4:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  And like, we are family, really. Like, Joe's just like a brother to me.

• 4:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So what was happening in your life around the time when the first ideas for people watching started coming to you?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I was back home and somebody who was very, very close to me, she's called Annie Orwin. She was an actor and she was like my surrogate mother. She got sick and she was sick for quite a long time.

• 4:48Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And how did you first meet Annie?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  So when I was a kid, my grandmother was like, he's hyper and we should put him in something that'll, you know, that he can express himself in and do some stuff. She put me in this local community centre acting class when I was like 13. And that was like, my grandma would pay for that. I think it was only like a fiver. And some kids actually didn't even pay. Like, she was like a community hero, Annie. And I had quite a low self-esteem. When I first met her, I was getting bullied in school and I didn't really have a lot of confidence. And she gave us pretty much, I think, all of the confidence that I have. So I did like loads of little bits of acting and stuff when I was a kid, like just sort of community theatre stuff. But it made us be able to go on stage and do what we do, you know?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  And, you know, there was loads of plans, like we had a plan, like when I was a kid, there was a, we were planning to move down to London. And she was like, you know, we can try out your music and your acting down there. She was always really supportive and she was the first person, I think, in my life to, that ever made me believe that this was like a viable thing to do as a career. You know, she was always like, you're a star kid. So she meant a lot to us, you know? She became like one of my best friends and even once the acting stuff stopped, I was like still, you know, really good friends with her in my twenties and. I used to go around to hers and she had periods where she was a lot better and and periods where like our cancer was under control and you know, we used to just drink

• 6:19Speaker 01

  a bottle of wine and bitch, to be honest, like most of the time. She used to always go, you never mentioned me in any of these awards. Like, you get an award and you don't mention my name at all. And I used to be like, well, I'm sorry. Like, she's like, I should be the first person you think of whenever you get an award for something. And I was like, oh, Jesus, I'm sorry, you know.

• 6:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was she joking or was?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Oh, she was serious. Well, she was joking, but she was, there was definitely an element of that. She was like, no, you see, she was serious about it. And then, not last year, but the year beforehand, I basically got a call off my other good friend, Joe, who was also like one of her proteges. And he was like, you know, I think, I think this is gonna happen. It was really bizarre because I went to see her and the whole plan was I was gonna get her out of the care home. And she was seemed in fine spirits. And I think some doctor came in and basically was really negative. And she just started deteriorating really quickly. So she said, you know, she didn't want to be alone. So I was like, well,

• 7:23Speaker 01

  we'll, I'll stay. And so did Joe and, and so did our wonderful nieces. We just slept on the chair next door, you know, for like five days, in and out, trying to do shifts. We'd go home for a couple of hours to try and get some sleep. And it was really, really like grueling, but like beautiful thing. Like it was, I was, it was an honor to be able to be there with her at the very end, you know?

• 7:49Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  You know, she died, you know, in my arms, you know, like I, I held her hand. And um, whoa, I just, you know, it is, I haven't actually spoke about it, like.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was like, but it was, it was beautiful in the end.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  So I had this piano chord progression.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  And I've got this little piano which I got from like a school. And we just put a load of pin tacks into the keys, which make it sound like metallic. The hammers are obviously metal hitting metal.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Really percussive sound.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Really percussive, really bright. Kind of like an old honky tonk piano. And I've got that in my kitchen. And I was like, what's this song about? It's definitely about something. Then Annie died. And I was like going through all of that. And then it was like, oh, it's Annie's song.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I was doing a demo on my phone, my GarageBand. And I don't use a microphone or anything. I just, I don't have it plugged into any gear. Cause I'm like, I'm like an idiot when it comes to tech. So I'll just go like

• 9:19Speaker 01

  and loop it like a bajillion bars.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  I'll record a piano for two bars and then just copy and paste that along.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  And then I'll find a bass.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  What I tend to do is find a loop. So that I can listen to it. And then eventually the lyrics come and the melody forms around it.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  When I walked back from the care home, back to my house, I was people watching, you know, like that was my, my sort of escapism was just watching people pass by and seeing what was going on in their lives. And I was obviously thinking a lot about life and death at the time. And how such a big character like was about to leave this plane of existence.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  And how kind of, you know, everything just keeps moving. The world keeps turning and everybody's still living their lives and going through their struggles. And, you know, and I think at the time I was also thinking about Britain being, you know, the cost of living crisis was a lot in the news at the time. And, you know, there was an element of guilt that I had because we're doing well. And, and a lot of the people that we know back home are, you know, struggling to even feed their kids. And so, you know, it was all of that was kind of swimming in the, in the atmosphere.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  I keep a watch on the way back home. I think it gives me a glimmer of hope. Gives me a break from feeling alone. Gives me a moment out of the ego. I used to feel so invincible. I used to feel it was a world worth dreaming of. Back of the gas works screaming a song. Just the beauty of youth would quell my aching heart. Oh, I feel so done. Remember me?

• 11:18Speaker 03

  Oh, my heart. I feel so done.

• 11:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Joe, do you remember the first time you heard this iPhone demo?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, we went into the studio, Super Sounds, and Sam was playing it to us. And we were just like, wow. Me and Dean and Drew was there as well. And we were like, wow, this is awesome.

• 11:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Sam, when you played the demo for them, did the grief and the feelings that you were feeling about Annie's passing, did they still feel fresh at the time?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was mega fresh because it was only in November, you know? Aside from Annie as well, like there'd been a lot of death.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  In all of our lives.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  So I think the band connected to it because we'd all kind of lost people and friends. And it was, I think that's the only way we know how to sort of deal with these things and process these things as an artist. Like, that's how you deal with these things.

• 12:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Joe, did you know how much Annie meant to Sam?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. But unfortunately, I'd never met Annie in my life. But Sam would always fondly talk about her. And even when we were kids, I remember him being like, I'm going to do my acting thing. I want to see Annie and stuff. And yeah, so obviously, you know, it did strike a chord because I knew how close they were.

• 12:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And why Sleeper Sounds? Why were you working there?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  It's a decent space to just to write things and get things moving. You know, you're just sat there doing it and it just comes together really quickly. And I like to work fast because I feel like a lot of the time with a song, you've got to strike while the iron's hot. Because if you don't, you lose that energy and that excitement for the song. There's nothing better than when you're like, it's like you're chasing a song. I feel like you're always chasing them down. You're like, let's get to the next bit right. Okay, let's record this acoustic. Let's put some synths in. Then you came up with a melody and it was just a little

• 13:15Speaker 01

  on the whirly.

• 13:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Who's playing drums here?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  That's Drew.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  That's how I drew.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  That's Drew, yeah.

• 13:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Could I ask you about the tempo of this song? Because given what the song's about, I could imagine an inclination towards, you know, writing something more like a ballad or just something much slower as a tribute to grief. I mean, like, that feels maybe like a natural place to go.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:48Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What was it about this kind of tempo that felt right to you about what you were writing about?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Well, I wanted it to be like that feeling of liberation when you're kind of getting over grief or like coming to the more accepting phase of grief. I think because I was so desperately wanting to get there myself, I wanted the music to get us there as well, I guess, suppose, you know?

• 14:10Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Sounds wanky saying that, you know what I mean?

• 14:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  It doesn't at all.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Nah, not at all, yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Annie was such a larger-than-life person and I wanted something to be more celebratory and have that kind of euphoria. Because she put so much euphoria into the world and, you know, into my world especially, you know, as a young lad. And like, I wanted that to be reflected in the music. But I never got the chorus.

• 14:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So this chorus, the original chorus, this just wasn't good enough for you?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was like, I've got to get it right. I can't make it like, it can't be crap. Do you know what I mean? It's about Annie. So it kind of just sat like half a song for like a few months.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, a little while, yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  For quite a few months. Normally the songs come together so quick. And this one was such a bastard. We needed somebody else to kind of help get it across the line. I mean, we could have done it ourselves really, but it was like, we're at this point in our career where like, we're really lucky that we could like, pretty much call on anybody and the label would back it. So it was like, I want to work with one of my heroes. Do you know what I mean? And I was like, why not? We have a saying in Newcastle where we're from. It's shy bands getting out and that means like shy kids getting nothing. So I just asked the label. I was like, can I ask Adam Gahan a seal from War on Drugs? And they're like, yeah, of course. We'll get his number. And then I just called him up and spoke to him about this idea.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  I sent him some songs and he was like, he fell in love with them and he called back straight away. And then we were just on the phone for like an hour and a half talking about Tom Petty. So it went from that to LA with Adam.

• 16:10Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Sam Fender and Joe Atkinson continues after this.

• 16:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 17:03Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This year, my wife and I are hosting Thanksgiving at our house. And in anticipation of that, I've already started some of the planning. And one of the things that I realized I wanted to have was some kind of small but elegant serving tray that I could put snacks and stuff on while we're just hanging out before the meal starts. So I turned to Wayfair and I found the perfect thing. These small wooden plates made from acacia. They match the rest of the vibe of my house and I'm going to be using them even when it's not Thanksgiving. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home, so you can host and celebrate without the stress. If you're hosting for any of the many holidays coming up, take a look at the website to browse for ideas or look for something very specific.

• 17:48Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can use filters and reviews and photos from other customers to help you find the perfect thing. When you're refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. This episode is sponsored by the podcast, What It's Like to Be. Do you ever think about what other people's workdays look like? Satisfying some of that curiosity is the idea at the heart of bestselling author Dan Heath's podcast, which is called What It's Like to Be. In each episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession to find out what it's like to be a professional Santa Claus, or a Secret Service agent, or a long-haul

• 18:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 19:07Speaker 01

  So Adam Granduciel jumped in and then we went out to LA and started working with him and it was, it was magic, you know? Yeah. I was sat in the house that we're staying in, we're like staying up in the hills. It was amazing, like a bunch of Geordie boys in Hollywood. What the hell has happened? This is ridiculous. Like in the beautiful sunshine and I just sat with the guitar because I was like, I've got to get this song sussed out. I remember just sitting up on there, looking over the hills and looking across the city and all of that and I was just sat thinking about Annie and thinking about, because she was an actor and she was like such a big movie buff, you know? Obviously being in Hollywood where like every bloody movie's ever been made.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I mean, so I sat there thinking about her and just thinking, God, she would love this. She would love being here with me. And we're driving down Hollywood Boulevard and there was just so many homeless people on the street and then it made us think of home because the homelessness is getting really bad back home. So it was like bizarre because then like the first half of that song is all talking about walking back from the care home, watching people back there. And then it was like suddenly I was like out in LA and I was doing the exact same thing, you know? And then these lines just came out of us.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  You know, somebody's darlings on the street tonight. That was inspired because Billy Connolly was, he did this TV show. He found this grave in Scotland and it said, somebody's sweetheart. And the village had found this random person that had no idea who this person was and somebody says, well, it's somebody's sweetheart. And they buried that person as somebody's sweetheart, which I think is so beautiful. It's like no matter who you are, where you go in the world, like you're loved by somebody. And that's what I thought when I saw all these people on the streets. Like I was like, that's somebody's darling, that's somebody's kid, you know? I remembered that as I was writing the song.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  It took so long to get it right and then that was like this overwhelming like joy and relief that we've got this chorus that was good. Such a great feeling.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Totally, because we'd had that song for ages at this point and we're kind of like, we knew there was something so special within it and after that we just straight to the studio.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Got Drew's drums down. Oh, he's so on it, man.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude.

• 21:47Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I mean, he's so on it that I actually wondered if these were samples when I got the stems.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  No, no, that's Drew's playing. Adam was kind of like, hey Drew, can you just do like a straight, just puticata, puticata and he just rocked that. We overdubbed some toms, bukaka, bukaka and then we started building from there.

• 22:12Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did your ideas about that little riff change when you got to this stage of the song?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we wanted it to be a worthy, but then I remember like, it doesn't quite poke out as much as we expected it to poke out. So I'll double it and I'll do like a kind of Mark Knopfler Dire Straits style pick and pattern version of it.

• 22:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I love the tiny bend, which you obviously can't do on the world it's earned. So there makes them more distinct as well.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  It sounds more like a band when there's like slightly different things happening.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  But we felt there was something missing in the high end and I wanted something that was gonna come out and sort of mirror the melody. So we had to figure out what it was gonna be. And I remember Adam thinking about that synth sound and he was like, yeah, it's like Dire Straits.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's like, hey, try this O B eight.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  We got it, O B eight.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Literally, we pressed like one sound and Sam was like, oh my God, this is the sound. We're just like, get it on now.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  It just adds, it's a lush like part of the palette, I think. I keep saying palette because Adam, we stole some of his terminology. Cause he, he always kind of looks at it like he's painting. He's like, yeah, let's go paint.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  We wanted to do acoustics and Adam was like, I want to get a bit more like a rhythm. And he was like, I think we should just do it together. So we set up a binaural head mic. We've seen them before.

• 24:07Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  So I love them. I mean, spooky, aren't they? Like, it's literally just like a human head on a stick.

• 24:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And the ears are the microphone.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the ears are the microphones. It's nuts. So like, we use that quite a lot to try and get a bit of that sort of like in the room feel. Adam sat on one side of it and I sat on the other side and we both did the whole song, just one take, just jamming it out.

• 24:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did it change the way that you played to have him playing it with you?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Well, it was just like, for me, that was like one of them, it was really special.

• 24:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What made it so special?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Because he's like my hero, isn't he? Do you know what I mean? It was like, I was sat and I was thinking like, I was like 10 years ago, I was in hospital. I was like living with my mother and me and my mom were both unemployed, didn't have any money. Black mold all over my bedroom wall. And when I was in hospital, the Lost in the Dream album, Adam's album. I'd become obsessed with it and that's all I listened to during that whole time that I was recovering. And it really meant a lot to me, that record. I used to listen to this album and dream about doing this as a job and being able to pay my bills.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  And now I'm in LA, sat with the guy who made that album, playing an acoustic track with him, but both doing it at the same time. Like literally one of my biggest heroes. It was, you couldn't write it.

• 25:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Can you tell me about the horns that come in later?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  The rip tones.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  The riffs.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  So the rip tones were basically a combination of our brass players, which is Mark Webb and Johnny Bluehat. And then the War on Drugs, Adam invited his mate John Natchez, and they came as a trio and we started calling them the Rip Tones.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  John Natchez is on Barry, Mark Webb trumpet, Johnny Bluehat on tenor sax. The solo, actually, in the tune, which comes in the outro, that was done on Johnny's first day to LA. Walked into Adam's studio. Jet lagged. He walked in and just ripped that in one.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Insane. It's the highest note I think I've ever heard him hit on a tenor sax. It was ridiculous.

• 26:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How was it recording your final vocals for the song?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  So I got quite fearful in the studio and booths, like just singing. And I only really feel comfortable doing my vocals at home because I just feel a lot less stressed. You don't have that like, oh my God, we're against the clock. So I've always kind of done my vocals either like in the flat or like in our place back home. Oh, I stayed all night till you left this life. But that's just love.

• 27:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Who's singing backing vocals there?

• 27:39Speaker 01

  That's Brooke, the newest member of our band.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  So me and Brooke have been friends since, what, like seventeen? And the first time I ever heard her sing, she was doing a cover of Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen. And my jaw was on the floor. I was like, that's how you sing? I actually started trying to emulate her vibrato as we grew up together, which made me a better singer. Like, I kind of learnt how to sing through Brooke, really.

• 28:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How do you think it affected the song to have her voice in there on those choruses as well?

• 28:20Speaker 01

  It's like singing with a family member or something, you know what I mean? It's like, we have that, is it telepathy?

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  I can sing anything and she'll just find a harmony immediately, you know?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  And then the middle eight didn't come until...

• 28:47Speaker 02

  That was a bit later, wasn't it?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  After that.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  I didn't have the lyrics for it and I was like, but I knew I wanted to round it off and make it about Annie and just kind of like a final gesture of love to Annie.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  I was like, I can hear strings in this section. So what I normally do is I'll sing the parts and then I'll send it to Rosie Danvers. She's string arranger. She's done everybody, like, she's the best.

• 29:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This was in Abbey Road?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Studio Two?

• 29:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How big of an orchestra was playing that?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Thirty.

• 29:27Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Wow.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  And it was going through the same compressors used by The Beatles.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  The first half of that song is like, I'm down in the doldrums. I wasn't in a good way at the time. I was definitely drinking too much.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  It was just, it was loss, you know what I mean? Grief hits you in so many different ways. And I think I was like, kind of focusing more on the loss as opposed to focusing on the, on the beauty, the beautiful impact she had on me in my life. I think that's where the song flips, being grateful. That's the end result of grief a lot of the time is just being so grateful. And it's that really painful love that you, you'll always carry with you no matter how long I live for, you know, I'm always going to remember Annie.

• 31:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you feel like you have responded to Annie's request about you shouting her out in your speeches?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's, that was the thinking, I think, you know, wherever she is now, she'll be like kicking her heels, saying like, "Why didn't you do it when I was there?" You know what I mean? But yeah, I think she would have liked this. I think she would have liked the tune. I don't know what I believe in, but I hope she can hear it wherever she is, you know?

• 31:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's "People Watching" by Sam Fender in its entirety.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  I keep a watch on the way back home Envious of the glimmer of hope Gives me a break and feel alone Gives me a moment out of the evil Used to feel so invincible I used to feel there was a world worth dreaming of Back in the gas works screaming the song Just the beauty of youth would quell my aching heart Oh, I feel so dark, remember

• 32:38Speaker 03

  Oh, my heart, I feel so dark, remember

• 32:51Speaker 03

  I keep a watch on the way back home Everybody on the treadmill running Under the billboards, out of the heat Somebody's dying on the street tonight Oh, I can't stop running I see the whole town fire I keep a watch on the way back home I keep a watch on the way back home

• 33:27Speaker 03

  I came back home after seven years Wide awake, chasing tracks of her tears Cornered the nurse and got the gist of it I promised her'd get her out of the car And the place was falling bits Understaffed and overruled by callous signs The poor nurse was around the clock And the beauty of youth had left my aching heart But it wasn't hard, I'd been lost on my

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Oh, I stayed all night Till you left this life If that's just love

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Happy for what's on the way back home Everybody on the treadmill Out of the downpour, out of the heat Somebody's dying, someone's strength to me Oh, I can't stop running I see the rules, I'm a fool Happy for what's on the way back home Happy for what's on the way back home

• 34:44Speaker 03

  Happy for what's on the way back home Happy for what's on the way back home

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Happy for what's on the way back home Happy for what's on the way back home Above the rain-soaked garden of remembrance Hitty waves that store initials in the sky

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Oh, I fear for this crippled island And the turmoil of the flames And I'll hold you in my heart till the day I die Whoa Happy for what's on the way back home Everybody on the treadmill Out of the downpour, out of the heat Somebody's dying, someone's strength to me Oh, I can't stop running I see the rules, I'm a fool Happy for what's on the way back home Happy for what's on the way back home

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Happy for what's on the way back home Happy for what's on the way back home

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Happy for what's on the way back home Happy for what's on the way back home

• 36:47Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit songexploder.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream people watching, and you can watch the music video. You might also enjoy the episode with "The War on Drugs," featuring Adam Grandeseal, who co-produced this song. There's a link to that in the show notes, too. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me about what I'm watching and listening to and thinking about, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you

• 37:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  Radiotopia.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  From PRX.