Songfacts®:

• "Tyrants" is a buoyant rock tune where Sam Fender rails against, well, tyranny. Not just those who wield power over others, but the internal sort too: the little despots in your head who second-guess everything you do, sulk at your progress, and insist you're not good enough.
• Fender first made "Tyrants" available when it featured on the 7-inch edition of his 2024 single "People Watching." He later included it on his vinyl-only Me And The Dog EP: an ultra-limited Record Store Day release on April 12, 2025.
• Sam Fender released "Tyrants" to streaming services on April 25, 2025, coinciding with his 31st birthday. The upbeat, rock-influenced song shows a lighter side to Fender's sound, boasting backing vocals by Brooke Bentham and a scorching electric guitar solo by Fender himself.
  
  For those keeping track of Sam Fender lore, he and Bentham go way back to their teenage days in Gosforth, when she was singing in a bar and he was just a lad with a guitar and a vague idea of vocal technique. She taught him how to sing properly, and he's since used her harmony vocals on several of his tracks, including the single "Arm's Length."
• "Tyrants" bridges Fender's earlier, guitar-heavy sound with the more expansive, string- and brass-infused style of his 2025 People Watching album. This transition reflects Fender's own journey: moving from nostalgia and memories (as heard in "Seventeen Going Under") to a more cautious, forward-looking approach on People Watching, such as the title track.
• Sam Fender wrote the song and co-produced it with American rock band The War On Drugs' Adam Granduciel, who also sang backing vocals. Granduciel also produced the People Watching album.
  
  "We're all fans of War on Drugs so it was a big full circle moment for us to be in the Studio with Adam – he's the don of sonics," Fender told Uncut magazine. "We hit it off from the get-go. I spoke to him on the phone first, and we talked for an hour about music that we loved. Tom Petty in particular. The whole time was a crease. We never stopped laughing, and we learned a lot from recording with him."
• Sam Fender debuted the song live on March 4, 2025, during the opening night of his European tour in Paris. He performed it with Adam Granduciel at Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on April 19, 2025.