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Last Tuesday, I went to see Sam Fender.

This was his first headline tour in the United Kingdom, a young 25 year old singer/songwriter from Newcastle with publicly high values on the left side of the political spectrum.

His lyrics are complex and his views are mature for someone so young.

He preaches about inclusion and the destructive nature of white privilege and his set is full of cartoons of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, not difficult to see where he sits in the run up to the election.

Alison and I went to Rock City as we do, as often as we can to see someone like this and he can certainly sing and his band was brilliant.

It is a funny crowd from 14year olds to 60 year olds, just there to appreciate up and coming talent in new music.

I wondered though as I stood there, how long Sam would be able to stick by the vocal principles that he has started out his career with.

One of his most haunting songs on his latest album is called white privilege. That is a controversial subject and not in this blog will I get into a discussion about why it is controversial.

Interestingly though, he left I out of his set on Tuesday night and he doesn’t have that much material.

It is deffinatley one of his most beautiful tracks, but perhaps he has already reached the stage where he is having to curb his principles for success.

When he came back on for the encore with just him and his guitar and the lights on, I turned to Alison and said, “this will be white privilege”.

It wasn’t.

Time and time again, we see people who are unable to cross the barrier of “the difficult second album” in whatever walk of life that is.

The danger of giving away your principles to maintain your success is that you lose out both ways.

You lose the success and you lose your principles too.

I think I would rather not have the success and retain the principles, but then maybe I am bizarre in the modern world today.

I don’t know if Sam will make it past this album and past this tour, but I really hope he does.

I don’t know if I agree with all or with any of what he says in his lyrics (I haven’t decided yet) but he is an artist and he is humble and he really appreciated every single person who stood in front of him on Tuesday night.

I think he is much more likely to make it if he sticks to his guns and by make it, I mean make it to a happier place.

Blog Post Number - 2205