In November last year, not long before he was announced as the winner of the 2019 Brits Critics’ Choice Award, 24-year-old singer-songwriter Sam Fender appeared on BBC Radio 5 to play a live version of his single “Dead Boys”. He explained on air that the song was inspired by the suicide of a close friend and by other young men in Fender’s hometown of North Shields who had also taken their own lives. For at least one listener, the song arrived just in time.

“Somebody emailed the studio to say that he had been on the way to kill himself,” Fender tells GQ. “He was listening to the radio. He said he stopped the car and just cried for ages, then he drove back and got help.”

Fender, understandably, felt overwhelmed when he read the man’s email. “I was completely flabbergasted,” he says. “It made me think maybe this job has a bit more weight to it than I’d thought, because people actually do listen.”

It turns out people were ready to listen in huge numbers. “Dead Boys” has already been streamed more than 4.5 million times on Spotify alone, putting Fender at the forefront of a wave of British musicians tackling issues such as male suicide, depression and toxic masculinity in the wake of the Me Too movement.

Alongside Fender are Bristol five-piece Idles, whose visceral second album, Joy As An Act Of Resistance, saw them wrestling with the complicated question of what it means to be a man in the modern era. On moshpit-ready single “Samaritans”, frontman Joe Talbot angrily proclaims, “The mask of masculinity is a mask that's wearing me,” and that message struck a chord, bringing the band millions of streams, a top-five chart position and a Brit nomination for Best British Breakthrough Act.

‘It’s telling that masculinity is being simultaneously re-evaluated by artists working in such disparate genres’

Talbot says the album’s lyrics were inspired by a combination of the Me Too movement and his own experiences dealing with the emotional fallout of caring for his paralysed mother until her death in 2017 and then his daughter, Agatha, being stillborn. “I was going through the pain of anxiety, grief and addiction, and those were all things I was bottling up,” he says. “Therapy was teaching me that being vulnerable and opening yourself up to others is the first step towards growing and healing. At the same time I was reading Grayson Perry’s The Descent Of Man and witnessing this rejuvenation of feminism, so that all led me to question what it is to be a man.”

Although his lyrics were exploring increasingly sensitive issues, Talbot says he never wanted the band’s music to lose any of its ferocity. “To be vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re weak,” he points out. “If you’re writing powerful music you can still talk about vulnerability and open-mindedness. The violence of our music helped us cut through the trash of other music.”

It also opened the door for other bands. Pete Restrick, whose band, Stereo Honey, released their What Makes A Man EP last year, cites both Idles and Sam Fender as inspirations. “I wanted to join that conversation,” he says. “I have countless friends who struggle with anxiety and depression, so I wanted to ask questions about manhood and what it means.”

When I suggest that skeptics might see bands jumping into this debate as a cynical, holier-than-thou fad, Restrick argues there’s more to it than that. “When corporations jump on the bandwagon it can throw people off because it seems insincere, but I think music has a different function,” he says. “When I see artists talking about issues that all men deal with it makes me happy that so many different people want to talk about it.”

Andreea Magdalina, the founder of Shesaid.so, a network dedicated to empowering women in the music industry, argues that in some ways bands’ sincerity or otherwise isn’t the most important issue. “Whether for these bands it’s a fad or an authentic change in how masculinity is being portrayed, it’s still a positive movement,” she says. “For the generation coming after millennials, the idea of looking at masculinity from a binary perspective is going away.”

© Getty Images

Opening up conversations about these issues can also lead to tangible differences for fans. As It Is, a pop-punk band from Brighton, last year released a concept record called The Great Depression. The video for single “The Stigma (Boys Don’t Cry)” has been watched 2.6 million times on YouTube. Frontman Patty Walters says that, as well as influencing what his band write about, the Me Too movement has also changed the scene itself. “With young, impressionable fans and young, at times irresponsible bands, people can be at risk, but I think the scene is starting to treat this in the right way,” he says. “We brought A Voice For The Innocent, a nonprofit which deals with sexual abuse, on tour with us in America so that people have the resources in case these things happen at our show or any show.”

It’s telling that masculinity is being simultaneously re-evaluated by artists working in such disparate genres. As a listener, I take something very different from the blistering fury of Idles, the raw emotion of Sam Fender, the romanticism of Stereo Honey and the perky optimism of As It Is. This reflects the fact that while men all react differently to the straightjacket of traditional masculinity, we have identified a common problem.

Of course, these bands are not the first to put the role of men under the microscope or to write about sexual assault. “You could pick out My Chemical Romance or Nirvana songs that address the same things,” points out Matt Wilkinson, a host on Apple Music’s Beats 1. “There’s a punk song by Alternative TV called ‘Another Coke’, which is about [experience of being touched up by a teacher]. It came out in the late Seventies but it’s similar in terms of theme and intensity to what a band like Idles or Sam Fender would be doing now. ‘Samaritans’ by Idles isn’t an easy listen – there are tough lines in it, but people have always connected to tough lines.”

Wilkinson argues that more than just a passing fad, these bands are providing a soundtrack for a cultural moment. “If you spend any time at all on the internet, within five or ten minutes you’re going to come across a story or a tweet referencing these issues,” he says. “It’s a cultural shift.”

Having been so close to the pain of suicide himself, Fender naturally bristles at the suggestion he’s following a trend to appear “woke”. “I’d be a bit of a dodgy [one] if I wrote a song about my mate who’s dead just because it’s the latest fad,” he says. “I don’t think that’s really possible when you’re writing about your life. I’d be writing about these things anyway.”

What all these bands have in common is an understanding that staying silent about depression or refusing to engage with your emotions can be a dangerous, even fatal, mistake. In Britain, death by suicide remains the biggest killer of men between 15 and 35 in the UK. As Fender knows from firsthand experience, talking about it – in songs, on the radio or simply over a pint with a friend – might just save your life.

Follow us on Vero for exclusive music content and commentary, all the latest music lifestyle news and insider access into the GQ world, from behind-the-scenes insight to recommendations from our Editors and high-profile talent.

Now read:

The first... with Sam Fender

It’s time to break the code of silence behind male suicide

Matty Healy interview: ‘Art, sex, drugs, religion. It’s just about losing yourself’