Life Uncut - Breaking Up With a Parent & Breaking Into the Music Industry - Uncut with Sam Fischer

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Joining the podcast today is the newest official member to the Life Uncut family Sam Fischer! Sam just finished touring around the country and opening our live shows! Not only is he just the BEST & we genuinely have so much love for him but he's also hilarious and a real 'heart' person who shares so openly and makes everyone around him feel safe enough to be vulnerable themselves. Something we learnt about Sam along the tour is that he had a really interesting start to the music world & a complex relationship with his family.We chat: Having a song as big as 'This City' catapult him into the spotlight and then the pandemic hitting The pressure to follow up on that success Navigating a really complex relationship with his dad What led to him eventually cutting contact  Whether his bad relationship with his dad has affected his want to have kids of his own How men can be really self conscious about hair loss/going bald You can follow Sam on Instagram Check out his websiteAnd pre order his new album! If you have a question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xx See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany and we have a banger episode today. I'm so excited to bring this to you. It's one of our newest Life Uncut family members. And the reason I say that is because it is Sam Fisher who just came on our national live show tour with us. He opened every single show. He's sung in the middle of the show. If you guys came to the tour, you'll know how incredible he was. And he really

has become a part of our family. We truly, truly love him and think he's incredible. And this interview with him today is going to really, really surprise you about the things Sam opens up about. Now, if you don't know who Sam Fisher is, he is the man behind this song. The thing that Sam speaks about in this episode and what I was so grateful to him for being so vulnerable about is him sharing his relationship with his dad. Sam speaks about his dad being a narcissist it being an incredibly toxic relationship and it's been something that he has had to come to terms with throughout his adult life Sam no longer has a relationship with his father so I feel like this is the type of conversation where if you are somebody who has been navigating challenging relationships with your parents you'll get so

much out of this but I think it was really incredible the way he speaks about when he became an adult and how he had agency and choice and was able to choose himself over the toxic relationship with his parents, how valuable that was to him. Actually, I was on his TikTok the other day and he has also written some songs around his relationships with his parents. And I just wanted to play you a little bit of that here to kind of set the context of what it is that we're going to be talking about. Joke about life as a child I force a smile when someone asks why

But now I'm older, can't seem to cry And I can't call them when I wanna die Scared to have kids who have my dad's eyes Cause they look at me like he did all my life You can't choose your parents But I'm better off without mine we also obviously touch on his ridiculous amount of success but not just the success the roads to success and how it hasn't all been smooth sailing there's been some really big highs there's been

some really big lows and a few sort of I want to call them like behind the scenes moments that he has had with people that managed him on his journey and I feel like it's one of those eye-opening things where you're like I wouldn't have picked that I wouldn't have thought you would have had to have gone through that to get where you are today I found it a really fascinating chat and one thing he actually touched on was baldness was going bald and he getting a hair transplant and what that means and how the stigma attached to that for not only for a man but somebody that's also in the public eye Sam is currently on his publicity tour for his new debut album which is I love you please don't hate me we have heard it it is brilliant and we'll put all the links to

that in the show notes as well but let's get into the chat sam fisher finally welcome to life uncut thanks guys i feel like it's been a long time coming i was wondering when i was going to get the invite i mean it has taken us to the end of the tour to find a measly hour play five shows with you guys six six shows yeah six shows who's counting though who's counting well seven shows total but you didn't really keep it a secret that you wanted to come on every day you were like hey You guys want to do the podcast now? But you know what? You don't get to weasel out of it because everybody tells us their embarrassing stories.

Yeah. Okay. So I had to be reminded of this by my guitarist, Martin. Sweet Marto. So Martin is also on tour with us. He comes to every show. Martin is like... He's the Robin to Batman.

Yeah, he is. He really is. He's also kind of like your PA. He's like your tour organizer at the moment. He is. To a daddy. He is my everything. He's my husband.

He's my dad. He's my son. Do with that what you will. Because we were thinking about like, oh God, like what embarrassing story am I going to tell? And he was like, Paris, you have to tell the Paris story. And I had forgotten, but clearly it's etched in his mind forever. Basically, the golden rule when you're on tour is nobody, and you guys will know this well, but no one shits in the dressing room.

Yeah, which did happen to Life Uncut podcast. Yeah, you guys understand that. The mystery poo. Yeah, the mystery poo. So one thing about me for your audience is that before every show, and probably you guys too, like you get butterflies and you get like a little anxious little like excited whatever that manifests for me into like needing to take a dump okay sure so i know what's going on inside me i probably need to drink more kombucha or like eat more kimchi feral feral awful awful

came from the depths of hell yeah so we're in paris on tour and we were literally like three minutes from going on stage and i was like ah mato like i gotta take them he was like oh my god okay fine go so i run back can't find the bathrooms there's a bathroom in the dressing room okay here we go i'm breaking the rule i'm gonna take a shit comes out quick and i'm like okay thank god like this is gonna be great i feel light and i look around for toilet paper and none there and i'm like oh we're in paris like it's bidet central there's no bidet you know what i mean so i text martin i'm like hey i know we're about to go on but there's no toilet paper and he was like okay so what do you want me to do about it i was like i kind of need you to

find me some toilet i get some dad dad please come wipe my ass for me wipe my bum so he is like running around trying to find it he can't find anything he finds like kitchen roll which is horrific and i was like man i like that's like sandpaper yeah it's like sandpaper i guess and he's like okay well the option is you either wipe your ass with kitchen roll or you run up to the restaurant that's above the venue hang on just going back in time what we had like two minutes left yeah oh like we definitely didn't go on on time also i just need to stop you there you actually had to weigh those options up like you wouldn't wipe your ass with kitchen roll because you're such a fucking diva no i did okay all right continue continue but it's really painful

Laura, the next time you take a shit, wipe your ass with kitchen roll, okay? She doesn't even use toilet paper. She doesn't have toilet paper in her hand. I just waterloaf to the shower. So Sam goes on stage with a bleeding butt. Right. So, no, actually what I did was, well, I also had to open the door for Martin to give me the kitchen roll. And I like open it a little bit.

And he's like, what is that smell? he's like we're gonna smell it on stage it's gonna come from the dressing room anyway so i was like oh my god fine with like a shitty ass i like run up to the restaurant and i'm like like hey i'm having dinner and i'm like fuck and so then i you would rather put your pants on with shit on them go up two flights to a restaurant to find something i don't know how you shit i don't know If you have like shit smeared all over your ass. You shit? After you shit.

Sam, don't you turn this on me. You shit. And then put your pants back on and then went up to a restaurant. Listen, I have a beautiful, amazing dumpy and my cheeks close over my hole. I don't know about you, but. You princess, rather than use kitchen roll. Yeah, but see, then I did use kitchen roll. I just did.

So I like run upstairs. I wipe. I'm like, okay, great. shows five minutes into it come back down and we might as well have evacuated the venue it was like everyone and it was kind of another like who took a shit because everyone and we were the opening band my friend ash everyone is like yo who did it what happened like who's sick i was like yeah like i think a small animal crawled in did anyone ever find out that you were actually the culprit yeah because martin was like it was sam he's disgusting i'm surprised he didn't tell

the story on stage anyway so that was pretty rough literally on your butt yeah i'm glad that you have persevered through it and it's these moments in life that make us better people you know yeah they build us the character building they build us into the person that we're becoming i got through a show with a bleeding butt and it's fine i'm proud of you let's cut to the serious stuff how have you enjoyed touring with life uncut it has been better than a bleeding butthole oh wow the bar was low no i'm kidding what a compliment it has been incredible we've had i feel like we've had the best time it's wild that we've only done what was our fifth show only done seven shows but we've been on tour for like a month this is why he goes it feels like

it's flying we've done two shows no we've done seven i would really like that to be the review like i really want someone to publish that in the telegraph with like three stars not five but like three stars and says better than a bleeding butthole that's what i think the title of this episode should be that's how i feel about it okay i want to know i mean a bit of backstory obviously you have had monumental success with this city's gonna break my heart and it's a song that everybody knows it's a household song but i feel like not many people or especially our listeners might not know your story as to who you are where you came from how you got into music can you give us a little rundown like the highlight reel of where you grew up like what

your childhood was like and how you got into music yeah I think I got into music just out of like sheer delusion and like arrogance I was like I saw someone playing the violin when I was like three and I was like I want to do that that was like the gateway in and then we lived out in Grosevale in Currajong and I went to Hills Grammar which is like in Borkham Hills which is like an hour away and my dad only had like three albums in the car it was like a Sundance rock compilation album Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard soundtrack and Michael Jackson history part two so that was what I grew up on for the first seven eight years of my life it was those three albums and then my mum used to listen to like Enya I used to love Enya I haven't thought of Enya in like 20 years

it's amazing like orinoco flow all day so that was it i was obsessed with it and then i started writing songs at like 12 because my parents for like christmas bought me a human nature album that was the first album i'd ever got and i like rinsed it i listened to the whole thing over and over and over learned every word to every song and i was like okay done with this want another album they were like tough shit i was like what but i want new music and so i started writing songs so that i could listen to more songs do you remember your first song do you still have that would you ever put that down and record no i would love to hear what a 12 year old song was like what you were singing it was called wake up and you know it was about waking up it's about being what no

i'm kidding i was literally like physically waking up the chorus was like the chorus is like wake up wake up you know the morning's here wake up wake up you know the sunshine's clear wake up wake up you know the night is through wake up wake up i mean a 12 year old who hasn't had too many complex things happen to them that's a fucking banger of a tune that could go on like a kid's nursery that's what i'm saying hold up no but you could adapt that make it a kid's song no adapt it for an adult song adults have to wake up too oh i love this your parents both are doctors and then they created an incredibly creative human who maybe didn't take the path in which they planned for them was that the case for you like did your parents think that you would

move into being academic especially because that's where they've come from you know my mom now says that she uh would have loved me to be a doctor i'm not smart enough to be a doctor first of all I don't know how I'm their child but my dad really wanted me to be a tennis player and I think his like biggest heartbreak with me was that I was just not good enough and he hated that and he hated that I was doing music but music was and it was always in my family like my mom's very very musical and my little brother's very very talented as well really musical I think they were happy with me being in the arts doing music focusing on that when I was growing up and then when it got really serious it was kind of the oh like this is actually what you want to do are you sure

really my mom was always championing me my dad was awful to me about it just a very like toxic human in general but I don't know I feel like every artist has that kind of push and pull with their family so I left Australia for like personal reasons like I knew music was it for me but my family was going through a lot and I thought it was me and so I took myself out of it and i went to uh college in boston i went to the berkeley college of music and like did that and then songwriting happened there and this is the same university that john mayer went through as well so this is like a very highly regarded and did you get a scholarship for this at the time yeah yeah i got a scholarship otherwise i wouldn't have been able to afford it it's

so expensive i did that and a music degree is a music degree wherever you go but the people that i got to meet there were incredible and like i met motto there so you're almost paying for the networking kind of berkeley's amazing it's great and i'm very grateful for it don't do me uh i don't know i think when you get out like billy eilish didn't go to music school no you know what i mean it's almost like you you can go through these formal educations and you think that you're going to get spat out with some sort of surety and it just doesn't you know it's the type of industry where it happens for some people and it doesn't happen for others and going through formal education is not the thing that's

gonna make you a superstar totally so i moved out to la in like 2014 and i just hustled really hard i had no money and i was like lying to my mom back home being like i'm killing la everything's great while i'm like sleeping on couches and in my car and stuff and i basically would like do cash jobs so there was like a meat pie store like an australian meat pie shop in downtown la and i was like a delivery boy and got paid in cash so i did that and with the money that i made there i would go to shows and clubs and pubs and if anyone said they were remotely in the music industry i'd be like let's hang i would always get their contact schedule a meeting with them it would be like a meal so like a lunch or breakfast or a dinner and that would be how i

ate each day smart you know i was like they're gonna put on the company like great if we could make our business meeting a five-course deck station you know i mean or pizza hut or you can but also at this time why did you feel like you had to tell your parents that you're killing it like was there not a time where you could say okay things are rough and I'm working through this and I'm still working towards my goal but you really felt like you had to put on a front for that yeah I mean my mum was going through a hard and my mum's incredible but she was going through a hard time like my parents were getting divorced and my dad was completely out of the picture we never really had the family environment where you could kind of like I don't know lean on

each other like that like I don't think we started saying I love you to each other until my dad left and then things got very very real we just need to stick together get through this couple years and whatever and then I don't know it was like five years of just like hell familial hell I don't know I didn't want mum to worry like I didn't want anyone to worry and I think I really pissed off a lot of people when i left australia to go to the us and i think a lot of people felt like i was leaving my family behind i was gonna waste mom's money and even my older brother was furious with me we've only really like mended things in the last like year or two i don't know i felt i just kind of wanted to protect them from my like bullshit and because i always thought i

was kind of the reason why the family dynamic was rough i also like it's terrible but i think proving people wrong is something that really drives me in life and i was embarrassed of struggling that you told everyone you were going to go and be this big success and i moved to la yeah and you don't want to be like i'm delivering pies yeah you don't want to be the burden on your parents and like big respect in that hustle but if i had said to my mom like i'm out in la and i'm delivering pies and i'm babysitting and i'm sleeping on couches and in my car and my friend's car I didn't have a car I feel like should have been like come home yeah and like coming home wasn't an option for me because it wasn't really like a home to go back to

this idea of when you wrote this city and how it got absolutely just catapulted it was such a household song but it's a song that you wrote years prior and it was because of social media that that whole dynamic changed and that it kind of became what it was can you talk us through what that period was like and if you're going from like delivering pies and sleeping on couches to being like what the fuck is this happening on TikTok yeah I didn't know what TikTok was when this city took off on it it was the weirdest thing so I signed a record deal in like 2016 I wrote this city in 2017 and that first record deal was horrible like insanely abusive the guy was signed to used to call me fat a lot used to make fun of my hair i was so stressed my hair

started falling out i got a hair transplant because it was my biggest insecurity like my wedding photos it's like hard to look at them because i've got like this big bald spot and shit like and so he was telling you this because he thought you needed to change to be more marketable or what was or was he just a horrible person i mean you know he's got his issues i think it was a power play i think it was manipulation you know ways for him to get artists to do what he wanted them to do instead of what they wanted to do. And it was like 10 months of that. Every meeting we had would be in his car and he would drive down the PCH, which is like the coastline of California in Malibu. Because it was in his car, he could dictate when it started and when

it ended. And so there were times when it would just be like this barrage of just like negativity and it's hard. And like, I didn't have any music out. And in my head, I'm going, well, there's no reason why i have a record deal because i haven't had any success i have no music out this guy is taking a chance for me so i'm just gonna like grin and bear it and then it just got really bad and i wrote this city towards the end of that deal and i like begged my managers to get him drop me and thankfully he did the best thing he ever did for me was drop me but you know when i wrote this city and i send it in like the response i got was it's pretty that's it it's pretty period like not much belief in it in the song and then my manager at the time said

it's a good song but it's nothing special and i have posted those emails lol i actually love that because it really sends a message drives home to people that if you believe in yourself in something and you are really proud of something it doesn't matter what other people think and this is completely unrelated but i always love this example of jk rowling in harry potter and she wrote those series of books and no one 12 publishers laughed in her face and was like it's absolutely rubbish no one's gonna take it but she's like i knew it was a good book she kept going it's the biggest book of all time and i feel like it's the same for artists when they they know something is great you can't necessarily go and listen when someone goes

it's a piece of shit you're like well imagine if you just took that advice and thought oh cool it's pretty i'll better start again what's crazy is that that song nearly didn't come out yeah like because i was at a position mentally where like i had lost myself like i didn't know what was good what wasn't good i just had no idea and so getting that response i was like oh well but i like singing it so i would sing it at shows and it was the one song people kept being like what is that song where could i find it i'm like it's not out like i don't know and so i get dropped and then six months later i put out this ep called not a hobby and originally this city wasn't on it and my friend kenny bless kenny he said to me i played in the ep and he was like where's this city

and i was like i mean i don't know if i want to put that out like no one like liked it and he's like what are you talking about it's the only song people remember it's the only one people but where do you i mean i think it's one thing to say that you know it's amazing when you have this belief and you know it's good and you keep going but i i think that often when you're told something's not good you believe that it's not good you believe that you're not good how do you find the resilience and also the determination to keep going when you have all these people who are in power telling you that you don't have what it takes yeah delusion no I mean I'm very lucky to have an amazing partner she was my rock through the whole thing

and she's right about everything and I don't know like like Erin and her whole family just had this very strange like blind faith in me i don't understand it i was like you're really backing like this foreign artist dude who's like dating your daughter what it's interesting that you say they don't understand it the first thing i thought of then was i think it's pretty normal for like a normal loving tight-knit family to have that kind of blind faith and support yeah and i feel like maybe we know that you didn't necessarily have that so when you got given that from somebody else you couldn't understand why on earth they were but it's because they were like cool you're part of our family now we love you and like yeah go get your drink yeah there were just so many

kind of things that happened like when this city came out I'd been dropped I was independent and it was basically like I'd written 200 songs in the year that I was signed there and I hadn't put any of them out and I think as artists validation is a big thing for us like when people say like hey that was a great episode or like hey the live show is like changing my life it feels good it just totally it does it's totally human reaction to be like great i'll keep going you know i'll keep going and so kenny saying like dude you have to put that song on the ep i was like okay so there was a song the song that this city replaced this is so cringe but wake up it was called the motherfucking liar song was it and it was like yeah just a motherfucking liar

it was cool though but yeah i took that off and put this city on and it was the fourth single of my four song ep and i thought i'm gonna put this out and i'm just gonna be a songwriter which is amazing and like you know songwriting incredible it was never going to be enough for me but like that was cool with me and it came out and when it came out the release got like bungled and my distributor like uploaded it two days late we got no playlist thing but lewis capaldi and megan trainer posted it and then it was wild and like fast forward a bunch like in the first year it did four million streams and i was chuffed i was like i've got four million streams and then the second year it did 200 million so what happened you're someone who didn't know what

tiktok was and all of a sudden you're a trending sound on tiktok yeah okay so it was march of 2019 and i'm sitting around in my little shitty apartment and i get this message from a creator named lee the fourth he's still he's massive on tiktok and it's this message that was like hey bro like i don't know if this is you or not but because you've got no followers yeah yeah i was like and he was like i think this is your song and i don't know if you know of this new app called tiktok but it's the biggest song on this app and i was like what and uh i said what are you talking about the streams has started going from like a thousand a day to like 10 000 to 30 000 and we couldn't figure out why and i was like it's just a great song everyone loves it but on the youtube

video I was getting comments that were like here from TikTok and so in my head I'm like Kesha like Kesha must have said something oh Kesha's TikTok song you know what I mean I had no idea what was going on and I knew Laura didn't understand what you were saying what are you talking about so I was like okay so I download TikTok and like I click on this link he'd sent me and the sound had 300 000 videos on it didn't know what that meant but i was like oh my god and i called my manager and i was like bro like it's happening it's going off or something's happening and i was like but at the same time i was like i've gone viral and no one knows it's me and no one knows the song title well like what the fuck am i supposed to do and so we at the time

only major label artists could have songs on tiktok so i was independent i was like how are gonna do this we had to like beg them to put just like the chorus up and just hope it went viral again and then it did and like it was this crazy chain of events like this city was going nuts on tiktok and then lewis capaldi messaged me on instagram he's like hey come open for me on my u.s tour i was like oh my god so i did that and like he's the homie and he really like put me in front of the whole industry and then you know the day after the final show of the tour the city got its first playlist which was pop rising on spotify and then it was on that for like six months and then later it was wild so erin and i got married june 1st and erin sings backgrounds for me and

get married june 1st june 2nd we fly out to dc to start tour with lewis and then june like 13 we get our first playlist and on june 15 i fly to new york for label meetings and then it was just like was on manic for a long time and i got a taste of the new like it boy for a second and then uh fast forward to like march of 2020 and i've booked ellen and corden and kimmel and the nile horn tour around the us and all these like crazy amazing things are happening and the pandemic canceled it all oh my god it chills me it's like the whole world was at your fingertips and it It was starting because you were booking all these things and people were knowing you and you were going viral.

And then, I mean, we know that when the pandemic happened, we know what happened in your life. Yeah. But it sort of, I don't want to say it crumbled, that's the wrong word, but it got put on pause. It took a turn. And your momentum, which I think a lot of artists need at the beginning, it's really important,

your momentum was stopped in its tracks. What is it like though when you become known for one massive hit and then there's this pressure that you've got to keep chasing and keep achieving that next huge hit like what is that like for you I don't know I love being the guy that sings this city love that but I think like there's so much more to me and I think a hit nowadays is so it's interesting because the landscape has totally changed I definitely felt a lot of pressure to like deliver a follow-up and like you know I was lucky to have what other people say with

Demi Lovato I don't know I think this city being the most like organic hit or whatever there was no trend it was just people like the song and were using it for their videos and I don't know I think that kind of pressure is self-inflicted and I try not to do that to myself because I know that it was like a one in a million thing that happened I think for me I would just like the opportunity tour like i would love those touring opportunities to come back to me would you want us to open for you on your tour yeah i'm ready let's do that like not i'll do it like a stand-up piece or like a comedy or like a sex thing i'll happily tell a story about queefing myself again it's fine yeah let's do that has the opening i love it like sam's opener punched a pillow

into her vagina it got stuck there as well so this city was written about your experience being in LA can you and I mean for anyone who doesn't know the lyrics this city's gonna break my heart this city's gonna love me and leave me alone I think when I first heard it and didn't pay attention to the lyrics I thought it was a love song and then when I actually listened to it properly and paid attention to what you were saying it was your relationship with the place and how it was affecting you can you talk us through that time in your life so at that time I was coming to the end of my first record deal and I was miserable and I had just gone to this like EP release party in Silver Lake which if anyone doesn't know it's kind of like

the new town I guess of LA but it's like new town on like so many steroids and I rocked up in clothes I thought were cool and I got there and I was like oh my god I'm not cool I'm not cool like I don't belong here what and then i just kind of left like very like discouraged and the next morning i didn't want to go to the session i was like pissed off i just want to like stay home and get high and like not be inside my mind and aaron was like get the hell out of the house go write music and so i did and i got the studio i was in a foul mood just everything was bad like I had no money I was signed to this guy that was just treating me like crap yeah just things were falling apart just everywhere and it was affecting everything my friendships my relationship just

like my own self-worth like it was that like it was just piss poor and yeah I got there and I have a voice memo of the session and the guys I was writing it with Jimmy Robbins and Jackson Morgan they were writing this kind of other thing over the like the city chords and I'm sitting there writing like i've been saying lonely people in crowded rooms and it's like it gives me chills like listening to the voice moment because it's i sit there and then i go hey guys i really like the guitar part but i don't love what you're writing but i did write this and then we started writing the city and i don't know it's one of those things where like i knew it was a good song but at the time i think i didn't care about anything i think i was so low and this city

was almost like my cry for help i don't know maybe the label will hear and be like oh he's like not doing okay they didn't at all so i was like fine this didn't work out like i've booked you in for your hair transplant exactly i was like we were in the lift the other day and you were like i gotta go and get my hair stuff and you touched on it that you had a hair transplant i want to know because we have a lot of questions that come in from like we had one literally the other week i think we underestimate what a point of self-conscious like hair can be for men it's kind of like what weight is for women or what skin can be for you when you were like i think i'm fucking balding what did that do to your self-confidence shattered it hair is everything to men i don't think it's

talked about enough i think that it's like not commonplace when i started losing my hair and i started losing it in my mid-20s i didn't think anything of it until someone pointed it out and the way it was pointed out was so brutal like someone was making fun of me it hurt like it hurts even like thinking about it but like it it just it's such a blow to your self-confidence I don't have my hair stuff in now which is why I'm wearing my hat I am so afraid of the public seeing my like bald head it's so interesting to me because I think that for so long it's been a point of something that people feel okay to make a joke about because it's not talked about how much it is actually an insecurity and so then you just have to be like yeah fucking funny i don't

care i don't i don't feel self-conscious about this yeah but i actually think it's so fucking cool and refreshing to hear you speak about it and be honest and not be like there's no secrecy around the fact that it's something that was an insecurity that you went and did something about it which so many people do but they do it under the guise of like huh just miraculously grew back guys they're thick and luscious now no i paid too much absolutely going to speak about it but what do you mean you don't have your hair stuff in now if you got a hair transplant so did the hair transplant work or do you have to put extra stuff in the transplant like so it worked to an to a point like i'm probably gonna have to get a second one it's not like full thickness thickness

you know what i mean so i use these things called fibers and like topic is i've seen that advertised recently you would never fucking believe them like sam showed me that before and then the and i was like i'm shooketh to my core i'll send you the photos if you want to include it in the episode you totally can like before and after of it in general like insecurity when it comes to like men's bodies that isn't talked about that much i think women have it way worse in the media and stuff like being a female entertainer performer artist is god i like really feel for you guys when that started being pointed out to me and i was being called fat as well it was just i was like okay well i find like i got to a point where i finally had the means to do

something about it and so i did and like really like i paid too much money to keep it silent i was like i have this like i'm gonna tell people and like the response i got when i was like hey guys like i'm having a hair transplant was beautiful like so many men were like thank you for talking about this and it's so not everyone has hair and like balding is so totally and who like people get botox get rid of wrinkles people get hair transplants to get hair like who it's it's just part and parcel now it's like the work i've had done and uh i don't know it's just i i support it and encourage it i think like do what you need to do to feel good and like that's it sam you i mean we touched on it earlier and it felt too premature to get into it but when you've

spent all your life working towards a goal that you're really proud of and that you want to be able to share it with the people who should be proud of you like your parents and be able to say like fuck look i've come to la and now look what i'm doing like look at this and look at all the things they've achieved that you have a fractured relationship with your parents how did you navigate that part were you able to share it not just with your mom but were you able to share your successes with your dad as well no no i think i got to a point where i didn't want to anymore with my dad my mom absolutely she's always really happy she bless her she doesn't understand at all what i do but like she she's really happy for me that's okay laura's dad thinks we have a

pod book yeah he's like how's your pod book going sweetie yeah so we get that yeah well mom like I think she felt like she had to like really step it up so she learned everything she could about Ed Sheeran now she knows absolutely everything about Ed Sheeran's career what's that got to do and so well I'm like well adjacent close but one day you'll get to me um but no I think with my dad my dad came from a very strange family he always said to us that he was like the black sheep of his family and i think i don't know i don't know why he had an issue with me you know according to my mom he didn't pick me up till i was two he like had a huge issue with me being like a flamboyant guy and i was in musical theater and but i was also this athlete and so he was like an athlete

like cool let's do that and then when i was like no i don't want to do that i'll do music Like he kind of, I don't know, just like stopped engaging with me and was very like quick to anger and would make fun of me for focusing on music and playing violin and he just wasn't a champion at all for me. And so no, I don't share any of it with him. We didn't talk for years and then he heard this city on the radio in Canada because he lives in Canada now.

And he messaged me from an anonymous Facebook profile and he just said just heard you on the radio in canada it looks like this music thing's working out and i was like cool did you respond yeah that's the thing it's so messed up but like i in my head was like okay like he's still your dad like respond and it wasn't until probably like five years ago when i cut him off that was me choosing myself it must feel like well and it was it mustn't it's not that it feels like it it is he came back into your life when it suited him because you were successful and maybe you were something that he could quote unquote be proud of and brag about now because you weren't a struggling artist and you were someone that you

know if he heard you on the radio it's a bit of a flex you know to other people in his life i mean you know he just had an issue with me i don't know what it was he has a very different relationship with my brothers or he had my brothers don't speak to him either but he basically to get like real intense when my parents relationship broke down I had just moved to England I was on my gap year I'd been there for three weeks and I found out you know he'd had this big affair and just everything was like fucked and the day after I found out he calls me and I saw the phone ringing and I was like okay hear him out he's still your dad like you know people make mistakes Whatever. And I pick up the phone and I was like, fuck you. You've ruined us. And he goes, well, Sammy, I wasn't going to say this, but if you hadn't been doing all these extracurricular things, taking your mum away from me, maybe we could have spent more time together and worked on our relationship.

and I was like he's saying that me like playing sport and doing music like drove you to fucking other women and doing all this and he was like well I didn't say that you said that but wow and I was like whoa and I was 18 at the time and it just like I spiraled so heavy but even so even when you go through these periods like unbelievably complex relationships with parents often so many of us who have experienced challenging times with their parents still want to forgive you still want to work through it because like coming to the ultimate decision to cut your parent off is such a fucking huge decision and I say this because like I have people in my life who I love dearly who have no relationship with some of their parents and coming to that decision takes years

of unchanged behavior by them and it also takes you becoming an adult yourself and realizing that you can choose yourself when was it that you decided and how did you decide okay i'm i nothing's going to change here i'm done five years ago on my birthday i which is july 5th so happy birthday i mean that was ages ago okay i'll never miss it again um yeah it was on my birthday and Aaron had organized this like great staycation in downtown LA and we were going to like the Shawn Mendes show and we were just having drinks on the roof with like a bunch of friends and I get this text from my dad saying hey Sammy I've had a stroke and I was like oh my god and I responded straight away and we hadn't talked in a long time I responded straight away and I was like oh my god

dad like are you okay like where are you where do I need to fly like I'll get on a flight straight away and he goes well i would have hoped your older brother would have told you but i was in hospital for two months and then i was in physical therapy for seven months and i was like so you had a stroke nine months ago and you're deciding to tell me today on your birthday on my birthday he said something like you know you wouldn't have cared anyway or some shit and like all just like very like hurtful passive-aggressive things and i kind of took a step back and i was like holy and I had like kind of a just a fucking breakdown because I was like this dude used his stroke to like hurt me emotionally manipulate me again and I responded straight away and like it was the most

just maniacal like sociopathic bullshit do you think your dad is a narcissistic and I say yeah yeah and like textbook well I say this because we're literally about to do an episode we've just done one on narcissism in romantic relationships but i think we so underestimate how impactful narcissism with a parent can be and then you know the the teachings of dealing with narcissism is that you need to separate yourself from them because you're never going to be able to achieve a harmonious relationship but that's almost impossible when it's your parent unless you make the decision to completely cut contact with them 100 that happened that year and then a couple other things happened like he on my little brother's birthday he messaged me

I'm also the only one I have two brothers I'm the only kid that he has the phone number of so he messaged me to ask if I would pass on a happy birthday message to Gabe and Gabe cut him off straight away when he left and I was like no I'm not gonna do that like that would be traumatic for Gabe so no and then on my older brother's birthday he texted me to say hey can you say happy birthday to nick and i was like also no i was like you don't you don't say happy birthday to me but you asked me to say happy birthday to my brothers and then i went to his facebook wall and on his like header picture it was a photo of him with my brothers and on his wall there were two posts and it was a happy birthday message to my older brother and a happy birthday message to

my younger brother and i was like i don't exist to this dude and i'm the only one who was who was kept him in contact and like i'm just over it and so a couple months later in it was christmas and i was in dc northern virginia with aaron's family and he messaged me saying like have a good christmas or something and i was like i responded i said thanks dad and he goes oh it's nice of you to respond for once fuck off and i was like you know what and so i sent him this whole erin she really like helped me she's amazing with words she she crafted this really a direct message of our relationship as it stands right now is just totally self-serving and i don't know what you want from me because it's clearly not a relationship because if you

did want a relationship it would be more than two two texts a year and those two texts being say happy birthday to your brothers and I was like mate like seek help seek a therapist but as for us like we're done I said to him you know you chose yourself 10 years ago and I am now choosing me because life is too hard it's too short and for me like chosen family is everything and I have incredible friends who I can lean on and I think the whole like blood is thick in the water thing is weird for me it's what we get taught though right like and and it's a great idea if you come from a household where your relationships are strong and they're built on foundations of love and respect and mutual love and respect just because you are the child of someone doesn't

mean that you are not worthy of the same respect in which you're expected to give to your parents but I just wanted to say like I appreciate so much you sharing that part of your life because I think as kids who don't have relationships with their parents there can be a lot of not just shame or guilt but like a lot of people think well you might grow up to regret it or you might change your mind when time runs out but it takes such a strong sense of self and such a strong sense of self-preservation to be hurt over and over and over again by your parents and then make the decision that you're going to cut them from your life because it's an abusive relationship it's it's there's this constant expectation that maybe they will change so I'll give them more

chances and it takes so much strength to make that choice and very few people do Sam do you feel like your complex relationship with your dad has impacted your desire to have children or impacted the way you go into a relationship now I don't say go into it like you're going into another one your relationship in general with your wife Erin yeah I think I get anxiety whenever I like say something or do something that reminds me of my dad and it's like a subconscious thing where like i'll say something i'll be like it's like shivers i'm like oh my god that sounded like him i think in a way i was actually talking to maddie about this like i think in a way it motivates you to be the dad that you wish you had and you know aaron and i one day the plan is to have kids

i think who knows but i'm excited about it like i definitely am nervous that you know history will repeat itself in the i don't know maybe maybe not it won't there is no part of you that would ever be anything like your dad you know i just you know the things my dad said to me when i was like six so i have four nephews and a niece and they're just like the light of our worlds and two of them are six and seeing a six-year-old and seeing how innocent they are and how like sweet and just like wide-eyed at the world the thought of saying or like yelling at them or bullying them is so feels so deeply evil oh my god i get like really like frustrated with it especially when i drink gin i get the gin crazies and we were talking about it once and i was like

i'm about to like call my dad up and like fight his ass um but it just i don't know so yeah like i'm excited to have kids i think i hope i'll be a good dad it's not scared you off them it's motivated to be better it's not scared me look like erin is the one who has to have the kids like it's when she says hey let's have kids like say okay let's do it let's do it i mean it's so true though what you said this idea that like people repeat behavior but when you're so conscious of the behavior you go the complete opposite end of the spectrum and for matt and that's kind of who i was alluding to matt doesn't have a relationship with his dad some people might know that some people might be surprised by that but it made him be a fucking amazing dad because

he had the same revelation he was like i just don't understand now that i have my own how it could have ever been the way that it was it makes no sense and so yeah i don't think you ever have to worry that it's gonna something's gonna just click in you and you're gonna go okay you know i have this pent-up narcissism that's just been waiting to unleash itself totally yeah no oh my god my narcissism comes out every day in my job so no that's just called being an extrovert that's not narcissism they're very different i think it's just being a performer right like and so many performers focus on yourself so many people i know actors singers podcasters people on stage are very different to who they are off stage like some of the the biggest personalities i know are

not that big off the stage sure and so i think it's something that it's not necessarily narcissism more cockiness but it's it's a part of your character totally but I think for me like the whole thing with my dad the really like tough part is it's really affected just any relationship that I have with any men who are in positions of authority in my life and it's been this pattern so like my dad the first guy I was signed to the last manager I had like there have been all these men in my life who have put me into this headspace where I had to really try and get their approval and it's just been so detrimental and so I I have a hard time connecting to other men like validation seeking kind of yeah I almost feel like I code switch sometimes when I'm

around guys that I'm not totally comfortable with what do you mean code switch I don't know if you talk to like a guy who's very like blokey that sometimes makes me a little uncomfortable and so I'll get blokey with them and that's what I mean by like code switching I'm like I can hang I can talk sport I can talk like I'm a manly masculine guy like it's so toxic none of my close friends are like that at all and it's only when I'm in also like business people like you know like you can feel yourself be a chameleon whoo absolutely it's a weird thing that I do and I wish I didn't but like it's just being comfortable around people it's a protection mechanism that people use right like it keeps you safe and it's something that you learn as a kid

and this is a lot of therapy speak but if you're someone who has been in a relationship with someone where you're frightened or you're you feel intimidated it is a literal a coping mechanism to become the most likable version that they will like and then you learn to do that in other areas of your life and it serves you well it works and so then you take that into your adulthood and it takes someone who's like done a lot of work on themselves to get to a point where they even recognize that they're doing that when they're in different social situations. Most of us just look at it and go,

yeah, I'm a social chameleon, but actually it's just someone who doesn't know who they are in their core. Right. Totally. Yeah. And like, that was,

that was me for a long time. Yeah. Who are you? Sam Fisher, the guy that sings this city. Sam, we absolutely love you. You are now an official part of the life on cut family.

And I feel like you're going to be stuck with us for the rest of eternity. I love it. Your new album is dropping December 1. December 1. What's it called? It's called I Love You, Please Don't Hate Me. Oh, I love that. It's a great song.

Also, you've just done an amazing collab with Guy Sebastian as well. Oh, yeah. Which is fucking amazing. That's coming soon. I'm so excited. Congratulations. I hope that we get the first signed copy. You will.

That was, yeah, that was, I left that. That was a threat. I'm going to get you guys merch because the merch is lit. You're a legend. Guys, go and listen to Sam, all of his songs, not just This City because he has a hundred different bangers anywhere that you can literally get music and don't forget to get his album December 1. Thank you, love.

I love you. We'll be right back.