“Real instruments, real orchestra, real f**king album. That’s what we wanted to do”
It’s safe to say that YUNGBLUD has a lot going on at the moment. We catch up with the 27-year-old English singer-songwriter at the Gibson Garage London, two days ahead of the release of his fourth studio album, Idols, and three days away from the second instalment of Bludfest, the music festival founded and headlined by YUNGBLUD with the intention of curating a more inclusive, accessible, and affordable festival experience for his fan community.
Idols was preceded on May 30th by the release of the remarkable music video for the single, “Zombie,” starring Oscar-nominated actress Florence Pugh and described by YUNGBLUD as “a love-letter to nurses.” Pugh, who YUNGBLUD considers to be “our best export at the minute and a truly great British artist,” stars as UK National Health Service nurse struggling to cope with the incredible pressures faced by frontline workers in an underfunded healthcare system. With 12 million streams accumulated in its first two weeks of release, as a musical statement, “Zombie” is as cinematic as the video that accompanies it, and a fitting appetizer for an album that represents YUNGBLUD’s most ambitious work to date. Let’s dive in.
Opening with a nine-minute song full of twists and turns, Idols is a bold, confident-sounding record from the outset. Where does that energy come from?
“I hit 27 and I thought the first iteration of YUNGBLUD had come to a close and come to an end. I really wanted to make something that would stretch the imagination right now and, fundamentally, attempt something classic and timeless. Not to sound like the past, but to take the listener out of any period of time. Music at the minute is so much about dopamine and less about depth, and that’s why songs are big for a second and then they fall off the face of the earth. Everyone’s putting a time limit on their ideas by making it so specific. We really wanted to make something larger than life and ambitious, and big. I want bedroom producers to shit themselves!”
To hear that widescreen rock sound right now is totally refreshing.
“People are sometimes afraid to make something that is influenced by, or adherent to, classic rock, because there’s stigma around it—classic rock fans are so rule-driven, and I think the reason is because it’s a sacred genre. Rock is always iconic in hindsight. Everyone is always like, ‘Who’s gonna bring rock back?’ But rock only gets brought back in hindsight. Everyone’s like, Oasis are trying to be The Beatles, Nirvana’s trying to be The Beatles, The Rolling Stones are trying to be Muddy Waters. In pop and hip-hop, whatever’s biggest is crowned king. With rock music, it’s more of a sacred genre. Did you define something? Did you change something? And ultimately, was it musically good? We really wanted to make a f**king rock album—a classic rock album—and pull from opera and theater the same way that Zeppelin did or The Who did. I think we’re the only ones that can do it right now because I have a fanbase that will follow me.”
How have your fans responded to the new music so far?
“I think it’s deep. That’s all they wanted. The surface level of YUNGBLUD, that he was a gobby kid from the north in pink socks, singing about politics; that was the first kind of iteration of it. But they made it about love and unity, and made it this massive movement worldwide. It was them. They taught me so much. And this album surrounds itself in five-dimensional emotion and questions the fundamental reasons of life, you know what I mean? Why. Mortality. Change. Time. Existence. Was this the album that people expected from me? F**k no! But, from start to finish, it’s the only one that makes sense when you hear it.”
It’s funny, when you think about those artists you mentioned—The Stones, The Who, Zeppelin—you look at those artists and see how quickly they evolved. They looked to the past for inspiration, but they never stood still.
“That’s the point. It’s all about making what you love and moving on. You look at Bowie; he’s been such a massive piece of inspiration for me on this album because it’s just like, put it out. And if people f**king hate it, that’s the art project. But from what we’re seeing it’s going to be the biggest idea yet, since the first album.”
Which guitars were you reaching for during the sessions?
“We were using Epiphone Casinos™ for a lot of the rhythm stuff. Adam [Warrington, the guitarist and musical collaborator YUNGBLUD previously described as ‘the Sid Vicious to my Johnny Rotten’] was playing a Les Paul™ through an Orange® Tiny Terror into a Marshall® cab, which was sick. I had my black 1964 ES-330. It’s f**king epic, man, I call it ‘Ghost.’ It’s rare from that time. Back then, black guitars were seen as the devil’s instruments. A guy painted the scratchplate with a ghost, and apparently, he died two weeks afterwards, so it’s full of the voodoo!
“The best thing about that 330 is that, instead of playing an acoustic, it gives me the cleanliness with a little bit of bite; it gives it that Oasis, Richard Ashcroft, Verve, kind of Radiohead element to the rhythm playing. So there’s a lot of Casinos and hollowbodies for the rhythm section, and then the big, beefy bits were Les Pauls.”
It’s probably the perfect summer for that sound to come back.
“Yeah, 100 percent. There’s nothing more f**king British than a Les Paul through a Marshall amp, sound-wise. Or a Les Paul through an Orange. And we did everything analog—we used no plugins. Everything was recorded analog on this album, including the orchestra. It’s all about the midrange. When you use plugins and a lot of in-the-box things, if you use a string sample pack, or you use plugins on guitars, it takes up so much of the mid frequencies. The best thing about recording analog is that everything breathes, because it’s hit with the attack of a real human—it’s not shrouded by digital elements. When you use a string sample, it’s so big that I can’t make the guitars drop hard, and if I’m doing blues details, I can’t make the strings, the blues, and the harmonies work together, unless it’s all recorded analog.
“The acoustic on the album is all J-200™, with a really soft, 0.44 mm plectrum. Best guitar sound I’ve ever had on acoustic. It’s a new J-200, which is amazing. I hit guitars really hard, and sometimes it makes them sound small. When you use a thin pick on the J-200 and hit it really hard, it’s f**king straight out of the nineties, man, straight out of Urban Hymns. I’m like, oh my god. It sounds three-dimensional, it’s epic. Real instruments, real orchestra, real f**king album. That’s what we wanted to do.”
You’ll be taking those songs and that energy to a live audience at Bludfest this weekend, but will you get the chance to see many of the other bands on the bill?
“I try my best to. Obviously, it’s in its first couple of iterations, and I’m being dragged from pillar to post to sell this new festival! But it’s all about the music, for me. We were so lucky last year. Lola Young, I put her on, I knew she was going to be massive. We put her on at 4 pm, main stage, and I was like, ‘Guys, watch this girl have a massive year.’ Then ‘Messy’ popped off and ‘Conceited’ popped off. And then bringing Lil Yachty and Soft Play and The Damned out… it was 100 percent. And then this year is going to be epic, I’ve got my friends Chase Atlantic, I’ve got Denzel Curry, I’ve got Rachel Chinouriri—it’s about the new generation. And then I’ve got a legend coming out with me onstage, which is going to be mental. It’s about bringing everyone together.”
Where do you see the festival going next? Is it something that could expand internationally?
“We’re taking it worldwide next year. That’s confirmed. My vibe is to take it across the world. I would probably take me and a couple of friends, and then have acts local to the locations. It would be epic.”
Following the success of the Epiphone YUNGBLUD SG Junior, do you have any other ideas for signature guitar collaborations?
“My vibe is that I would love to make Ghost. I would love to make an Epiphone Ghost. A black 330 with the matching scratchplate to mine would be just a dream. Put this in the article, put some feelers out, see if the kids would be into it! Again with that guitar, no-one’s got it, it feels really iconic. With the scratchplate, it’s so f**king sick.”
Are there any other guitars you are shopping for at the moment, or have there been any recent acquisitions?
“I literally just got a black Junior, double cutaway, Murphy Lab, that I’ll be playing this weekend. I’m obsessed with it. The best thing about the 330 is I’ve got the multiple pickups, and I can change the sound, I can make it cleaner, I can do a lot of really beautiful shit, but when I want to rock out it’s one P-90. That’s why I have my white SG and now the black double-cut Junior as well. That’s my sound, man. Gain up to 11, no pedals, through me Marshall at the back, braying the f**k out of it. How hard I hit it, and the gain, is the YUNGBLUD sound. That scrappy, punky, naive sound I get from it. It’s f**king epic.”
When you think about how quickly “Zombie” has blown up, and how it has connected with so many people, does that give you a different sense of responsibility or change the way you think about what you are putting out there?
“On this album, more than ever, I had to make it for myself. Ultimately, I believe people want me to tell the truth. That’s what people want from me; they want the unfiltered, unadulterated truth. And the only way you can make that is if you don’t listen to anyone, if you don’t take any opinions in. You’ve just got to make it from the place you want to.”
In the current climate, when everyone is throwing opinions at the internet all the time, how do you do that? Do you just switch off?
“Again, this album was all about self-reclamation. YUNGBLUD became such a polarizing figure to people. People think I’m inauthentic, people think I’m not real. The things I became insecure about, I didn’t even know I was insecure about, until I read them on the internet! It’s wild! I just had to shut everything out. If this was the last piece of art I was ever going to make, I needed to stand by it. If you make something like that, if you put everything on the line, you are uncomfortable and you are terrified, but it’s the most beautiful place to be in as an artist. You’ve just gotta f**king do it and say, f**k it, let’s go!”
Find out more about Bludfest and check out the new YUNGBLUD album, Idols, streaming now.
