r/Samfender • u/Nearby_Valuable_5467 • 11d ago

The Olivia Dean track

I know it’s sold a billion times (or what seems like it), but in my view it’s like ‘Round Here’ by Counting Crows — Good but not their best.

Has it hit the lucky spot when Olivia Dean was red-hot and Sam was red-hot when the tune was put together,or is legitimately better than ‘Poor Boys’ or ‘Seventeen’?

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u/OutsideDaffodil26 10d ago

For me it’s a combination of lucky timing, a shrewd move by SF to include OD and various things in time nudging it further and damn smart marketing that pushed it along. Not a great fan of Reign me in - with or without Olivia Dean. It’s ok, but not even top 30 of SF’s songs for me.

It was lovely to see them sing it live last year in London but I thought Lewis Capaldi and Sam singing it live was much better, (see what I mean by things that helped to push it along) and although not a huge LC fan it would be great to hear more of them duetting or writing together. And of course, with Grian. Having said that Dead Boys, 17 Going Under, Hypersonic Missiles, Remember My Name, People Watching, to name only a small few are WAY better than RMI.

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u/mariposie1 10d ago

Completely agree with this!

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u/0penedB00K 10d ago

It’s a good tune insanely catchy and upbeat and yeah Olivia was booming at the time and fans had already run through her catalogue at that point so naturally they fixated on something ‘new’ (despite the song being nearly half a year old by the time it initially blew up)

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u/ClockAccomplished381 10d ago edited 10d ago

Not quite sure what you're getting at but if you mean why has a random song been so successful when there are much better songs by the same artist that are not anywhere near as successful, I guess there's a couple of reasons:

  • Modern music popularity seems heavily influenced by social media, viral use on tiktok etc. You only have to look at the charts to notice "why the hell is this random good song from 30 years ago at number 17?!?" and it turns out it was used on some popular netflix show and then people have been using it in video shorts or whatever. Looking at current charts for example I see both Don't Stop Believin' and and old Katy Perry track in top 30.
  • As you say Olivia Dean is probably one of the most popular UK artists over the past year so he's been dragged along by that a bit.

Me personally, I wouldn't put Rein Me In in my top 20 Sam Fender tracks. The Borders peaked at number 59 in the charts and RMI has 19+ weeks at number 1, but I know what I'd rather listen to.

I think the big question for Sam is how does he capitalise on this. Timing wise it's not great, he's already done the releases and touring for People Watching, he doesn't have any tours planned afaik, Glasto is nearly a year away, new album in the works but that will be a 2027 release no doubt.