Yungblud on protecting enthusiasts protected, and his ‘blouse off technology’

The Netherlands, March 2025. Yungblud is leaving his lodge in Amsterdam when he is approached by way of a fan in floods of tears.

“You saved my life,” she sobs.

“No, you saved your own life,” he replies, quietly. “Maybe the music was the soundtrack, but you saved your own life, OK?”

Leaning in for a hug, he provides, “Don’t be sad, be happy. I love ya.”

It’s a remarkably touching second, stuffed with compassion and devoid of rock megastar ego.

Two weeks later, after a video of the come upon is going viral, Yungblud continues to be moved by way of the reminiscence.

“I didn’t think people would see that, except me and her,” he says, “but it was such a moment for me.”

The interplay crystallised one thing he’d felt for some time.

“I always said that Bowie and My Chemical Romance saved my life, but ultimately you have to find yourself,” he says.

“Like this morning, I put my headphones on and I listened to [The Verve’s] Lucky Man, and it made me go, ‘Oh, I’m ready to face the day’.

“But Richard Ashcroft did not inform me I used to be able to stand the day. I mentioned that to myself.

“That’s what I was trying to tell that girl in Amsterdam.”

Self-assurance is a lesson he realized the onerous means.

On the outside, Yungblud, aka 27-year-old Dominic Harrison, had all of it. Two primary albums, a world fanbase, a Louis Theroux documentary and sufficient clout to run his personal competition.

But in the event you seemed extra intently, there have been chinks within the armour. Those primary albums each fell out of the Top 30 after one week, an indication of a powerful core fanbase, with restricted crossover attraction.

And the primary 12 months of his Bludfest in Milton Keynes was once criticised after lengthy queues and a loss of water led to enthusiasts to move out and leave out the live performance.

Harrison was once keenly acutely aware of all of it. As he launched his self-titled 3rd album in 2022, he hit a low.

“Yungblud was number one in seven countries, and I wasn’t happy because it wasn’t the album I wanted to make,” he says.

“It was a good album, but it wasn’t exceptional.”

The drawback, he says, was once a document label who’d driven him in a extra industrial route. But in sprucing his sound, he misplaced the indignant unpredictability that characterized his best possible paintings.

“It’s funny, my-self titled album was actually the one where I was most lost,” he observes.

“I felt like I compromised but, because of that, I was never taking no for an answer again.”

Nowhere is that clearer than on his comeback unmarried, Hello Heaven, Hello.

Over 9 mins and 6 seconds it achieves Caligulan ranges of extra, stuffed with sizzling guitar solos, throat-shredding vocal runs, or even an orchestral coda.

“Do you continue to have in mind, or have you ever forgotten the place you might be from?” Harrison asks himself, as he re-ignites his ambition.

The tune’s purposefully unsuited to radio – not like the follow-up unmarried, Lovesick Lullaby. Released nowadays, it is a free-associating rampage via a messy evening out, that ends with epiphany in a drug broker’s condominium.

Combining Liam Gallagher’s sneer with Beach Boys’ harmonies, it is uniquely Yungblud. But the singer finds it was once at first written for his final album.

“We were actually discouraged from doing it,” he says.

“My advisor at the time, a guy called Nick Groff [vice president of A&R at Interscope, responsible for signing Billie Eilish], was like, ‘I don’t get it’.”

Warming to the theme, he continues: “The music industry is crap because it’s all about money but, as an artist, I need to make sure that anything I put out is exciting and unlimited.

“It cannot be like a 50% model of me.”

To achieve that, he shunned expensive recording studios and made his new album in a converted Tetley brewery in Leeds.

Professional songwriters were banished, too, in favour of a close group of collaborators, including guitarist Adam Warrington, and Matt Schwartz, the Israeli-British producer who helmed his 2018 debut.

“When you’re making an album in LA or London, the whole lot is excellent, even supposing it is mediocre, as a result of other people desire a hit out of it,” he argues.

“When you’re making an album with circle of relatives, all they would like is the reality.”

One of the most honest tracks on the record is Zombie, a lighters-aloft ballad (think Coldplay, sung by Bruce Springsteen) about “feeling you might be unpleasant, and finding out to fight that”.

“I all the time was once insecure about my physique, and that were given highlighted as I were given well-known,” says the singer, who final 12 months published he’d advanced an consuming dysfunction because of physique dysmorphia.

“But I realised, the most important energy you’ll be able to give any person over you is in the way you react. So I determined, I’m going to get sober, I’m going to get have compatibility, and I came upon boxing.”

He ended up working with the South African boxer Chris Heerden – who was recently in the news after Russia jailed his ballerina girlfriend, Ksenia Karelina.

“I met him sooner than all that,” says Harrison, “however he is been extraordinarily inspirational. Boxing’s turn into like treatment for me.

“If someone says something bad about me, I go to the gym, hit the punch bag for an hour and talk it out.”

Fans have spotted the trade… drooling over pictures of his newly chiseled torso, and stating 2025 his “shirt-off era”.

“Maybe the shirt-off era is a comeback to all the comments I’ve had,” he laughs.

“I’m claiming a freedom and a sexiness and a liberation.”

He’s obviously discovered some extent of serenity, with out surrendering the stressed power that propelled him to popularity.

Part of this is right down to keep watch over. In January, he created a brand new corporate that brings in combination his core trade of recorded track with traveling operations, his model logo and his track competition, Bludfest.

The match kicked off in Milton Keynes final summer time however suffered teething troubles, when enthusiasts have been caught in lengthy queues.

“I will fully take responsibility for that,” says the megastar, who claims he was once “backstage screaming” at police and promoters to get the traces transferring.

“The problem was, there were six gates open when there should have been 12,” he says, suggesting other people underestimated his enthusiasts’ willpower.

“When Chase and Status had played [there] a day before, there were 5,000 people when the doors opened, and another 30,000 trickled in during the day.

“With my enthusiasts, there have been 20,000 youngsters on the gate at 10am. So we now have realized so much for this 12 months. There’ll be pallets of water out of doors. It’ll be very other.”