I thought Yungblud was going to be exhausting. Having watched him in action on one of Louis Theroux’s programmes, I had half expected to meet Rik from The Young Ones or the weird brother from Wedding Crashers.
After all, Yungblud is the Robbie Williams of Emo, the middle-class, Bowie-obsessed ex-public schoolboy masquerading as a victim of domestic abuse, the former stage school kid selling his own misery memoir in the form of grandiose Mika-style pop, a pan-sexual ADHD disciple spilling his guts for a generation of disenfranchised goths looking for a gobby, panstick spokesperson in black leather and fluorescent pink socks. Or so his critics might say.
But Yungblud — born Dominic Richard Harrison in 1997 — is none of these things. Well, he is a little, but not as much as his critics want him to be. He talks about his creation Yungblud in the third person, and acknowledges that he’s an alter ego, but the sentiments behind its creation appear to be real.
Having grown up in Doncaster with two younger sisters and parents who ran a small chain of records shops (inherited from his grandfather, who was also a musician who occasionally played with Marc Bolan), his upbringing appears to be the thing that has caused him the most pain as well as the thing that’s given him the most sustenance.
His third album, titled Yungblud like his first EP, was released in 2022 and reached No 1 in the UK. He’s got new stuff coming out soon, stuff that’s more mature, but with a pop sensibility that’s going to make him an even bigger star. He has spoken a lot about suffering abuse as a child; at school and at home. He says it has defined him as a performer, and he has been criticised for exaggerating it. True?
“The cashflow problems in the business put a massive strain on my family. My parents had such a beautiful love, but it was toxic. There was physical abuse everywhere.” He had physical abuse?
My parents had a beautiful love but it was toxic
“Not me. But my father to my mother. My father was rough on my sisters. It was always right on the edge of blowing up. It still is. It’s crazy, man, seeing your father on top of your mother, hitting her, and taking his stress out on me, but then still being so close. The whole kitchen would explode if there was no milk in the fridge. We never addressed it. It was never black and white, always very complex. This wasn’t a white picket fence upbringing.” His father is still having therapy for anger issues, but how has exposing that affected the family?
“I think they’ve resolved it now. But it’s a f***ing hard thing to comprehend. Both my father and grandfather taught me a work ethic, but then I also went to private school and wanted to be an entertainer. I developed a very strange relationship with love. It’s very easy for people to look at the internet and make assumptions — oh, he went to private school so he’s lying about this, he went to this so he’s lying about that, blah blah blah.”
The first thing you realise is how much Yungblud suits being a pop star. He has beautiful eyes, which really light up when he smiles, a smile that makes the one employed by Jack Nicholson’s Joker look positively weedy. He talks in a broad Doncaster accent, is a really good swearer (he makes Liam Gallagher sound like a choirboy) and wears the kind of black leather that previously only Jim Morrison (and briefly Elvis) got away with. He writes extremely good songs, is a terrific performer and espouses the kind of rainbow, ambisexual opinions that get you elected as student president. In fact, he’s so perfect that he could almost be made up. Which is sort of what he is. In a way.
“I feel that when someone expects you to be something, and you’ve reached that caricature level,” he says, “you start repeating yourself. And so, I was starting to not tell the truth, and the truth is all I’ve got. I was starting to exaggerate and fall into a formula or a script. When I started to have commercial success, people are out to get you.
“Doncaster was both beautiful and very f***ing strange. I grew up in a family business and I was always around music. I loved it, as all the older guys in the shop would teach me what was good and what was bad. But Doncaster was very hard at times because it’s very set in its ways, very industrial; it’s got beauty, and it’s got dirt. It was quite hard for me to walk into a pub because of the way I looked.
My family were kind of supportive, but school and teachers were tough. I was always out there, I was always f***ing crazy, always wild, always had a lot to say, and people either loved me or hated me. I wanted to put on make-up, I wanted to be in a band, an entertainer. One teacher said to me, in front of the entire class, boys don’t wear nail varnish, and I was only 13, when you’re at the height of your insecurity. I still feel like I’ve been kicked in the face when I think about that. I use it as f***ing fuel. Teachers didn’t like my imagination.”
Okay, but I repeat: even though he has managed to channel this anger into his work, how do his parents feel about this? When I saw them on the Louis Theroux programme they looked like perfectly reasonable people. There certainly didn’t seem to be any edge between them.
People used to call me Damien from The Omen... then I was diagnosed with ADHD
“It hasn’t been easy. I really think we’ve reached a place now where we talk about it a lot more. I think my sisters have found it hard, and sometimes my middle sister feels like she’s had her voice taken away by my perspective, because I’m the first one to get sympathy. I think my father felt quite hurt, but I think it led to us talking about shit that we needed to talk about.”
He has previously talked about having mental health issues and being diagnosed with ADHD. When did all this happen? “Primary school. I was f***ing nuts. There was a lot of swearing and madness in the guitar shop, and all the staff used to call me Damien, from The Omen. I was into Sabbath, and when I saw Ozzy Osbourne for the time, that was me personified. My mum always thought it was just a by-product of being around a lot of older guys, but then I couldn’t focus on things I didn’t want to. I loved history and drama and English and was obsessed by the Romans. When I was having an episode, my teacher would talk to me about the Romans. That’s when I was diagnosed with ADHD. I was nine or 10.”
At the time he was starting to wear his sisters’ dresses, but unsurprisingly, he became obsessed with music, with David Bowie, the Clash, Lady Gaga, Slipknot, Marilyn Manson. At the age of nine he decided he wanted to be an entertainer. He was also starting to question his sexuality. When I ask him if he was pansexual (which he’s said before), he says, “Everything’s sexual. I’ve always been deeply sexual. I was just into whatever. I was just fascinated by other people. Relationships.”
At the age of 13 he asked his parents if he could go to stage school. He enrolled at the Arts Educational School in Chiswick, and quickly got parts in a theatrical production of Bugsy Malone, a Disney TV show (The Lodge), Emmerdale. He briefly formed a band, and then invented Yungblud, a vehicle for his feelings, angers, mental health issues and frustrations, an alter ego in pink socks and make-up. He went out and bought a leather jacket and he was transformed. His pain, his truth, here it was, all wrapped up in a skinny, shouty alt-rock proxy. Punk rock with love, is how he puts it, ready, willing and up for the fight.
“Is it a persona? Yes,” he says, nodding furiously. “But now I feel f***ing comfortable.” There is such a lot of tosh talked about authenticity in pop, almost as though only the very poorest and most underprivileged can truly hold the torch. Well, both John Lennon and Bob Dylan were middle class, Joe Strummer went to public school, and obviously Amy Winehouse went to stage school. Does this make any of them less appealing?
Me, I think he’s a genuine Gen Z rock phenomenon. He’s very open about his ambitions and about what he’s used to fuel that ambition. And while he is using his current incarnation to generate affection among his ever-growing fan base, and while those fans seem to increasingly rely on him as a spokesperson, people change, as we know, both pop star and fan alike. And when they do, I’m sure he, and his fans, are going to be just fine.
Yungblud plays at Bludfest, June 21, Milton Keynes Bowl, bludfest.com
