Wild Grey Ocean

Album: Seventeen Going Under (Deluxe) (2022)
Charted: 71
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Songfacts®:

  • Over sparse piano and gentle guitar, Sam Fender reflects on a past love and other teenage memories.
  • Fender grew up in North Shields, a seaside town in Northeast England on the North Sea. He had a miserable upbringing, working in a local restaurant and pub to support his ill mother while still at school. He uses the North Sea as a metaphor for his melancholy ruminations.

    I finish work and compartmentalize
    With the wild grey ocean buried in my eyes


    Fender has a brother, Liam, who is 10 years older. Here he laments the lack of support he got from his friends when Liam got badly beaten up.

    I call them good time friends
    'Cause they're never there when s--t goes down
    Like when my brother got jumped and they hurt him real bad


    Fender's love interest had enough of North Shields and went her own separate way.

    I wonder where you are and if you have settled down
    Haven't felt my heart make a single sound
  • Fender wrote "Wild Grey Ocean" himself. He recorded it during the original sessions for Seventeen Going Under with producer Thom Lewis ("Get You Down"). It didn't make the album, but Fender released it as the lead single from the live deluxe edition on October 25, 2022.

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