Sam Fender has announced special celebratory Newcastle editions of his next album by sharing QR codes across the city.
The announcement comes ahead of the singer-songwriter’s long-awaited live shows, which will see over 100,000 fans flock to Newcastle’s St James’ Park stadium this weekend.
The first show of the two-night residency will take place tonight (June 9), and will see the Geordie artist and his band perform the biggest gig of his career so far. Support acts for the show include Hector Gannet, Holly Humberstone and Inhaler.
The latter of the two shows will be held at the same venue tomorrow (June 10), and will feature support from Holly Humberstone, Wunderhorse and Ernie. Find any remaining tickets here.
Now, in the past few days running up to the shows — which will make him the first-ever local artist to headline the venue — a series of billboards appeared close to the stadium, and piqued fans’ curiosity.
The posters contained three variations of Newcastle United shirts, each one representing one of the his albums. The first showed the garment with the number one on it — representing his debut 2019 album, ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ — and the second showed the number two, referring to his second LP ‘Seventeen Going Under’, which arrived in 2021.
It was the third shirt on the poster that caught fans’ attention, however, which simply showed a QR code next to it.
the billboards outside st james park with the qr code go to this page > https://t.co/2QDNTCWU17
maybe we’ll have news about a third album sooner than we think 👀 pic.twitter.com/70OJlMKArX
— sam fender files (@samfenderfiles) June 8, 2023
While fans were kept in suspense over the past couple of days, this morning the QR code went live — revealing itself to be a link for fans to pre-order a special edition commemorative St James’ Park picture discs of the musician’s upcoming third album.
Two different picture discs will be offered (one for each night of the show) and both are set to feature photos from the upcoming gigs, which will undoubtedly be a significant milestone in Fender’s career.
Both of the picture disks are available on the musician’s online store, and will only be on offer to fans for one week — shutting off at 6pm next Saturday (June 17). Find out more information here.
Speaking to NME about this weekend’s massive gigs, Fender has promised performances of a handful of tracks from 2021’s acclaimed ‘Seventeen Going Under’ that he and his band haven’t managed to play live yet, as well as offering that there will “probably be songs from another album that hasn’t come out yet.”
Describing the new music as sounding “very pretty” with a strong “singer-songwriter” vibe, Fender revealed that he has already written a number of songs for the next album.
Despite stadiums being on the horizon, Fender said that he wasn’t planning on writing music purely to fill huge venues.
“If I try and force myself to write stadium songs, we could end up fucking it I think,” he admitted. “Instead, I want to write about the stories that I have and the place that I’m mentally at in my life at this point. And I’ve had a lot to write about.”
In other Sam Fender news, last month the 29-year-old shared his emotional reaction to meeting his musical hero Bruce Springsteen for the first time.
This came after he supported The Boss in Ferrara, Italy on May 18, then later again at his show in Rome on May 21. Following the first slot, the musician shared a picture of himself with tears in his eyes. “FUCK,” he captioned it. “Just met the boss.”
A follow-up video showed Fender and his bandmates reflecting on the experience as they travelled back from the venue. “I’m gonna fucking whitey, me,” he said in disbelief. “It was the maddest thing ever.”
Fender is also due to headline TRNSMT and Reading & Leeds this summer. Additionally, he’ll make appearances at various European festivals including Rock Werchter, Sziget and NorthSide.