“People Watching” by Sam Fender

Sam Fender unveiled "People Watching" in November 2024 as the title track and lead single of his third album, and it's a tribute: he wrote it for Annie Orwin, the late friend and mentor he has likened to a second mother, and the song took shape on the walks he made to her care home and back.

He made it in Los Angeles, co-producing with Adam Granduciel of the War on Drugs, and the arrangement is built big and warm: saxophones from Johnny "Blue Hat" Davis and Jon Natchez, Mark Webb's trumpet, Wired Strings, glockenspiel and piano from Fender himself, and synths from Granduciel and Joe Atkinson, all stacked around Fender's guitar and Dean Thompson's, with Brooke Bentham and Thompson on backing vocals. Fender wrote every word and note, and it climbed to number four in the UK.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.