By Tom W. Clarke
Idols, by Yungblud: a Tarantino-esque pastiche of ’80s arena rock, ‘90s Britpop and ’00s emo.
Yungblud, Idols
Ever since he exploded onto the scene with his 2018 breakout hit, I Love You, Will You Marry Me, Yungblud has been a lightning rod. An outspoken, gender-bending, genre-hopping pop-punk emo from the English suburbs, Yungblud – real name Dominic Harrison – is a magnet for curiosity and controversy.
He’s been accused of queerbaiting and fetishising the working class. He has been both celebrated and chastised for his political activism, affronting sincerity, and chameleonic approach to music and fashion. Depending on who you ask, he’s a trailblazer or a poser, inauthentic or unapologetically himself.
His music runs the gamut – he bounces like a pinball, pinging off David Bowie into Billy Idol, hitting Blink-182 and Machine Gun Kelly, grazing Robert Smith and Harry Styles. He’s less an enigma than a graffiti wall, painted over until it becomes something messier and grungier but unmistakably fun and oddly beautiful.
Yungblud: the 27-year-old, real name Dominic Harrison, has been a magnet for curiosity and controversy.
The 27-year-old’s newest album sees Yungblud embracing his contradictions, whirling through the chaos in search of meaning, and emerging with a carpe diem-style optimism. It’s ambitious, diverse and sprawling. But like a restaurant with too many items on the menu, you never quite know what you’re going to get.
The album opener is Yungblud’s most impressive artistic achievement yet. Hello Heaven, Hello is a nine-minute statement of intent, and unlike Green Day’s Jesus of Suburbia (which is effectively five mini-songs sewn together), it feels like a complete product from start to finish. It moves seamlessly from early-2000s pop-punk to ’80s arena rock, and then shifts down into ’90s Britpop. And, somehow, it absolutely works.
From there, the album is almost Tarantino-esque, a technicolour pastiche. Yungblud wears his influences on his sleeve, for better and worse.
Sometimes he crosses the line from homage to caricature. Change is a plodding ballad that feels like a bad Bowie parody. Lovesick Lullaby resembles the worst of mid-2000s pop-punk, inducing PTSD flashbacks to a time when Good Charlotte and Thirty Seconds to Mars ruled the airwaves. And Fire is clearly influenced by great British rockers like Ozzy Osbourne and The Who, but never leans heavily enough to pull it off.
More often than not though, his full-throttle approach to musical encomium takes the form of a delightful surprise, distilling the scattershot nature of the Yungblud experience into something fresh and exciting.
The nostalgic Idols Pt 1 has traces of Neil Diamond; The Greatest Parade is an indie sing-along in the vein of Franz Ferdinand and The Killers; and Monday Murder is a Blur-style slice of Britpop perfection. Zombie is a poignant ballad, vulnerable and haunting. Supermoon is a tribute actually worthy of the Bowie comparison.
And Ghosts, the best track on the album, is a six-minute gloria of late-’80s British alt-rock, invoking U2 and The Cure, with jangling guitars and Yungblud’s most compelling vocal performance, another song of unexpected length that doesn’t waste a moment. It’s euphoric, climactic and tremendous.
It’s all a bit messy, yes, but unconventional, ambitious and exhilarating. Who knows what comes next? It could be literally anything.
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