Songfacts®:

• "Spit of you" is a slang term meaning an exact likeness or resemblance, as if one person had been spit out another's mouth. This song finds Sam Fender singing about his similarities to his father, Alan Fender.
• During the first verse, Fender admits to seeing himself in his dad in several ways:
  
  Both get stressed easily.
  
  Knotted up with the baggage
  Neck like a stone
  All sounds just like you
  
  And father and son share a violent temper.
  
  Smashing cups off the floor
  And kicking walls through
  That's me and you
• Fender is an open person who normally finds it easy to communicate with people, but connecting with his old man is an entirely different kettle of fish.
  
  I can talk to anyone
  I can't talk to you
  
  Fender shared on social media: "It's based around my own relationship with my old man, and how we both struggle as blokes to communicate the way we feel to each other without it becoming a stand off. It's about how the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as I get further in to my twenties I see so much of myself in him, especially when it comes to being stubborn."
• We learn in the second verse that things changed when Alan Fender's mother died. After Sam Fender witnessed him vulnerable and emotional, he saw his father in a different light.
  
  You kissed her forehead
  And it ran like a tap
  No more than four stone soaked wet through
  And I'd never seen you like that
  
  Said Fender: "The second half of the song talks about seeing him with my grandma when she passed away, and how I saw him as a son, and how that moment reminded me to make the most of my time with him. If anything, it is a declaration of love for him."
• Fender concludes the second verse by imagining himself kissing his father's forehead when he dies, just like his father did to his mother.
  
  'Cause one day that'll be your forehead I'm kissing
  And I'll still look exactly like you
• Fender told The Guardian he was in tears as he saw his father grieving for the passing of his mother. Watching his dad saying goodbye to his mum helped Fender understand him more.
  
  "I'd never seen him like that. I saw him as me, as a son, and saw his loss," he said. "You give your parents a hard time because of course they will do things that upset and hurt you. But it's hard to raise a kid, especially when there's divorce and money issues. There were things that happened that I used to hold a grudge about, but a lot of it was my own fault because I never said what I needed to say. You don't know how to communicate these things when you grow up in Shields."
• Fender released the song as the fourth single from his second album, Seventeen Going Under. The singer-songwriter recorded it at Grouse Lodge, a studio near Rosemount, County Westmeath, Ireland. Fender's longtime friend Bramwell Bronte produced the record; he also produced all the tracks on Fender's debut album, Hypersonic.
• Another similarity between Fender Sr. and Fender Jr. is their love of music. Alan Fender was an amateur singer-songwriter who regularly played records at home by Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell and David Bowie when his son was a child. Sam Fender inherited his father's musical genes.
• Philip Barantini (Band of Brothers, Chernobyl, Humans) directed the poignant video, which shows a fractured relationship between father and son. British actor Stephen Graham (This Is England, Line Of Duty) plays the role of Sam's father.
  
  Barantini, Fender and Graham also worked together on the 2021 one-shot feature film Boiling Point.
  
  Other videos that Stephen Graham appears in include:
  
  Arctic Monkeys: "When The Sun Goes Down" and "Fluorescent Adolescent"
  Babybird: "Unloveable"
  Deadmau5: "I Remember"
  Kasabian: "You're In Love With A Psycho"