Yungblud’s ‘Idols’; full creativity, no compromise.

Yungblud is the stage name of musician Dominic (Dom) Harrison. He recorded his first single at the age of 19, followed by three best-selling albums and six billion streams. This month sees him enter a new creative phase with the release of Idols, the first part of a double LP.

Idols has had an unusually long gestation, starting when the unexpected commercial success of Yungblud’s second album fired his creative ambition. “Weird! went to number one I think on 11 December 2020. It was the first piece of commercial success we'd ever had, and I remember sitting at home over Christmas and being like, Holy fuck! We went to number one on an album that was so experimental. I really want to take this idea further. I want to make an album with no through-line, and I want to make a piece of work that is an embodiment of a world, and an attempt at making something classic.” Three weeks later Harrison called his producer and they immediately started work on the first iteration of Idols.

But his label weren’t keen on the change of direction they heard, encouraging him to stick to the proven formula of Weird! “My vibe was like, well, it was only commercially successful because people liked it – it wasn't trying to be, you know what I'm saying?” As a result, Idols was put on the back-burner and his next long-player was 2022’s self-titled YUNGBLUD. It was another commercial success, debuting at number one in the UK album charts, but for Harrison it was an artistic disappointment. “To be honest, I felt so underwhelmed by my art on the last album. I'd allowed five years of pressure, opinions and bullshit to fall on top of me, so I almost let go of the reins on the last album. I felt like I wasn't in control of what I was doing.”

He now feels that being discouraged from making Idols back in 2021 has resulted in a better record. “I’ve finished it with a lot more authenticity and understanding of what I want to achieve with it: to elongate the imagination and create a world for people to fall into for longer than two minutes.” Associating obviously commercial music with the shallow pursuit of short-term dopamine hits through “short songs, quick hooks, dumbed-down ideas”, he resolved to make something enduring. “I really want something to be rich. I don't want you to rinse this album once a day and get bored with it in six weeks. I want this to be an album that you put on once a week for the rest of your life.”

At over nine minutes long, the lead single “Hello Heaven, Hello” couldn’t have sent that message more clearly. Harrison was advised to put it out in three parts, but he stood his ground. “I really think this was all about not diluting my personality because when I've diluted myself, people have questioned my authenticity. I made that mistake in the past.” For Harrison, the success of Idols will be measured by its integrity rather than its popularity. “I don’t know if it’s going to be legendary or if people are going to think it's shite – you just never know with the general public. But I know that I can leave that behind and be like, that was 100% my artistic intention, without it being diluted, without it being compromised, without it being fucked with by any external idea.”

“I feel like that’s why the world is so fucked right now – it’s all about, ‘You don’t think the same as me so fuck you, I don’t want to be friends with you”

— Harrison

Harrison returned to his home county of Yorkshire to write the album, recording demos in an abandoned foreman's house at the old Tetley Brewery in Leeds together with guitarist Adam Warrington, producer Matt Schwartz and composer/producer Bob Bradley, whose experience in film music was invaluable to the more ambitious scope of the new album. “I needed it to feel big – I didn't want this album to feel like it could have been made in a bedroom.”

While most of the recording was done in Leeds, the drums (originally demoed by Harrison) were re-recorded at Angelic in Oxfordshire. “I’m riddled with ADHD so I can't play drums consistently at all. My drummer has a better energy on the kit than I do, he knows how to hit drums. I just vibe it.” A noticeable change on Idols is that elements such as strings, which would have been sampled on earlier records, were recorded live at AIR Studios in London. “Sampled strings take up so much in the mid-range because they're plugin-based,” Harrison explains. “When you have music of such depth as this, the guitars and the strings are always fighting unless they're organic. When you record a real orchestra it's got a lot more space – you can hear detail if it's live strings and live guitars as opposed to sampled; you either pick guitars or strings if it's sample-based, because there's no room in the mix. We've got harmonies, strings and loads of guitars going on so we recorded it all analogue.”

The change in production approach has transformed Yungblud’s recorded sound compared with his earlier releases. “Listening to my old records, it's so funny now – it was fresh at the time because it had hip-hop and plugins, and almost felt really bedroom. So I think that’s what caught the kids’ ears. But it didn't date as well as I wish it would have done. So my idea one day is to potentially re-record ‘Marry Me’, ‘King Charles’ and ‘Loner’ with this new mindset because those were timeless songs but the production sometimes hinders it.”

Yungblud’s new, more layered sound is showcased on tracks such as “Monday Murder”, which Harrison describes as “beautiful music that makes you feel like you can fly. That song is almost five-dimensional when the guitar, the orchestra, the acoustics, and the percussion element come together.” But the lyrics are darker, exploring the lack of compassion and connection in contemporary society. “That song is about apathy,” Harrison says. “I feel like that's why the world is so fucked right now – it's all about, ‘You don't think the same as me so fuck you, I don't want to be friends with you.’” Warrington came up with the germ of the song on his guitar, “and then we doubled it with a mandolin, and then we did the Beatles beat. We wrote through the night.” Aware that it’s easy to lose perspective on his own music, especially at night, he waited for sunrise to judge if the song was as good as he hoped. “When the sun came up, at about 7am–8am, with these big French windows in the studio, I was like, ‘Fuck me, man, I've got something magic with this album.’”

“Monday Murder” is followed by a song that Harrison can’t wait to perform live: “Ghosts”. “I wrote that for stadiums. The dream since I was nine was to be a stadium rock star – to look out onto a community that shares a similar idea to you in its thousands.” It’s another example of Harrison creating art according to his own instincts instead of following arbitrary rules: feeling that the song was missing something, he decided a long outro was in order and set about creating one in suitably excessive style. “All my mates were there at the time, and I was like, ‘Get in the studio,’ and we had a moment. I was like, ‘Just go with me,’ we did a shot of Jack, ‘Right, clap. Every fucker clap now. We're going to create the best rock ’n’ roll outro for the past 20 years, since “Baba O'Reilly” or Night at the Opera. Let’s make something mental.’”

Idols sees Yungblud creating rock music in its purest state. “I love music, but I love rock music the most. We didn’t want to pull anything from a sample-based or digital world. It was like, ‘Let's set up instruments in a room, and let me write animalistically, as a baby, or a monkey.’ If I was going to bang on the drums, I'm just going to do it.” The next track, “Fire”, is full of that intensity. “It feels like if The Doors, The Stone Roses and Massive Attack had an orgy,” says Harrison, namechecking just a few of his musical influences. Another big inspiration is David Bowie. “He really held my hand through this, because when he made Heroes, he made his most humane work. And when I made this album, I feel like I've made my most humane work by trying to be as experimental as possible. You're battling against something and you're rebelling against the idea. So you go into complete isolation, stare yourself in the face, and you almost become a shell of yourself. Berlin Bowie, Thin White Duke Bowie: pants, no t-shirt, slicked-back hair. Yungblud Idols: pants, no t-shirt, slicked-back hair. This is me in my rawest form.”

After the success of last year’s inaugural Bludfest, Harrison’s one-day festival returns to Milton Keynes this month. Later in the summer, he’ll take the new material on a tour of North America and mainland Europe, with dates for the UK and Ireland leg next April selling fast. “It's a whole new adventure to go on. We sold 35% of the O2 out in 20 minutes, and it's a year away. When I started this album, I genuinely thought Yungblud was done. You write an album like this because you think it's the end, and then you find a whole new beginning and a whole new hemisphere. So it's crazy.”

Idols is out 20th June.

Author: Rachel Goodyear