This Review is long, be warned
September 15th 2022
It almost feels like we just got done with the album before this, Weird!, when out of nowhere Dominic Harrison starts telling us he has albums 3 and 4 basically done already, and just like that less than two years after Weird! Rocked my fuckin world, Yungblud’s self titled third album enters the room to do it again.
The record starts off with The Funeral, a Billy Idol meets The Cure under the Yungblud banner to make a fitting tribute to all the brit pop and rock that came before, while also giving the incredibly clever concept of likening the sad implications of nobody coming to your funeral to the same thing happening at a party, cause what is a funeral if not a party to mourn death and celebrate life. Tissues rips in immediately afterwards, sounding like the best song from an iconic late 80's movie soundtrack, it samples the Cures "Close to Me" to great effect, and is an anthem that's fun to listen to. Then comes along Memories (with Willow), riding a fiery wave of pop rock energy to deliver musings on dwelling to heavily on the past.
Cruel kids is the first non single in the tracklist, and makes a good showing with beautifully crafted verses that break into the acoustic rock chorus, complete with lyrics that hearken back to Weird! in my view, then along comes Mad, and with it one of my very few qualms with anything on the album. This song is short, only having one verse, the chorus 3 times, and a bridge before it's curtains for mad, however the track loses none of its impact as a result, it's a high quality pop track, that more connects and gets it's message across on the emotional front more than from a mental perspective based on its lyrics. I Cry 2 after that is a short track as well, but benefits from it's clever and even amusing lyrics in the verses, a lovely chorus (although there is some obvious effects or pitch correction or straight up autotune on the chorus, and I a) dont know which, and b) dont know if its intentionally there)
This is the point where Yungblud crosses into one of the best back halves to an album in recent memory. We start with Sweet Heroine, which is this albums counterpart to Weird!’s ballad “Love Song”, and does at least as good of a job as its predecessor, if not better. Then we are treated to the ethereal intro to album standout “Sex Not Violence”, which brings synths, a rumbling bass, and a sexy guitar tone to one of Dom’s best vocal melodies yet in his career. Then comes what may be my favorite song on the album, except for the closing track perhaps, “Dont Go”, a truly awe inspiring track that delivers melodies of the caliber of the core melody of Sex Not Violence, but does so with everything, the chorus, the verses, the prechorus, the bridge, it is the perfect rock infused pop song (or vice versa). Then immediately after that emotional rollercoaster, we get a couple two minute masterpieces in the form of Dont Feel Like Feeling Sad Today and Die For A Night, the former is a song that while it has a Billy Idol meets the British invasion bands punk feel, this song is pure Yungblud at his best, and the latter is a song in the same vein as “Its Quiet In Beverly Hills”, an acoustic song that contemplates the feeling of restlessness and weird philosophical questions that come with being dead tired in the middle of the night, but the last thing you’re able to do is sleep, including that age old question “how would the people I know and that know me react to my death?” (or maybe not, but thats what it feels like to me).
Then we head into the closer “The Boy in The Black Dress”, a track about self loathing, enduring despite hatred, wanting to please everyone but also be yourself, struggling withbyour identity, whether it be sexuality, gender, personality, or anything else, and stories of how you got where you are. A true coming of age and looking back song, a note to a past self, and an anonymous story about ones self. I encourage you to lose yourself in the song, and not look up the lyrics, because the song truly is a story, it has a plot, and when the twist at the end comes, it hits best when you hear it that first time as a surprise, and maybe some people would say thats and exaggeration, but I truly had a mind blowing moment when I listened to the album for the first time, just a couple weeks ago, at 1am just an hour after it released, lying in bed, and that last line played out. It was like my bed and the entire house below fell out from beneath my ass and I was in the second of looking around at myself, suspended in midair, just above the ground and just below the sky, in that moment before gravity takes over and you fall.
Critics, I should mention, mostly seem to think that this album is head and shoulders above Weird!, or anything that Yungblud has done so far for that matter, they praise how Yungblud boasts a more mature and cohesive sound, and only a year and ¾ after Weird! released and was received relatively well, they are willing to bash it as being childish, brash, and scatterbrained, to a certain degree. (some just say Yungblud was an improvement, while others go out of their way to shit on weird!) As for Youtube reviewers, its about 50/50. Some love the album and praise the production style and vocal performance for having less grown to it. Others criticize the lyrics and the leaning on 80’s influences.
Distorted Sound Magazine notes that the album being self titled is a fitting move, claims the album shows him “shed the bratty teen image he created with his first two albums”. It also features this strange opinion that I personally am fuckin confuzzled by, people seem to like Memories, but many reviews mention saying Willow better fits the song, or that Willow is somehow objectively superior and therefore it basically makes the track into “Willow featuring Yungblud” (more on that in a bit). When speaking of Mad and I Cry 2 it says “Mad feels slightly reminiscent of his previous work but it has more of a mature feeling to it as rather than complaining or making excuses” and “I Cry 2 is just under two minutes long and this is some of YUNGBLUD’s most mature work so far despite the short runtime” for Don’t Go it makes the same criticism of everything that came before “Don’t Go follows and it feels reminiscent of his work on the sophomore album weird! except for this time it feels less cartoonish and more mature.” They give the album 9/10
Gigwise mentions that Yungblud gets a lot more hate from the internet than is deserved (if you can even say any hate like that is ever deserved). And while on the first three songs, Don’t Feel Like Feeling Sad Today, and Die For A Night, but yet goes on to say Cruel Kids is wannabe Edge Lord, Mad and Dont Go apparently “run out of steam”, and The Boy in the Black Dress is to immature in its lyricism (it directly criticizes that last line I fawned over in my thoughts on the song, like come on, dont do me like that). It also says the album isnt as good as the first two. They rate it 7 stars/10
NME & Kerrang!
Both call the album “more cohesive”
Again, Kerrang goes for the throat by dismissing Weird! As “cartoonish”, but gives this album lost of praise, especially on Memories and any of the tracks that display the ever present influences, and gives the album 3/5 (for context, they reviewed Weird!, called it “flamboyant and colorful” and gives the album lots of praise before suddenly calling it too sugar coated and too much bright day-glo unicorn piss before slapping a 2/5 for the rating)
NME referenced their interview with Yungblud where he says he is “reclaiming my name and humanising the caricature” (I have something to say about that too, I’ll get to that soon). For some reason the randomly added the Emperor here, mentioning it before The Funeral, despite the Emperor being a standalone (or possibly 4th album single that we have yet to realize). It says Die For A Night wallows in dark emotions, and I adore what they say about The Boy In The Black Dress: “a cinematic, goth-infused anthem of self-acceptance, self-discovery and ferocious self-belief. Polished but still with that scrappy edge, it’s perhaps the closest Harrison has come to writing the ultimate Yungblud song” However they, interestingly enough, give Yungblud 4 Stars/5, but they gave Weird a full 5 stars, saying: “Taking everything that’s brilliant about Yungblud and amplifying it, album two is Harrison at his most extreme. It’s exactly where he belongs, too. Yungblud’s never seemed more inspiring or vital as he proves himself as one of the most important rock stars around. ‘weird!’ really is wonderful.”
Rolling Stone talks about the album almost shying away from the virality and mainstream rocket pace of Weird!. It praises the album, noting its the perfect stuff for arenas and tiktok, make of that what you will. (Rolling Stone no longer rates albums)
Read this too: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-62764488, it's not a review, but it's really good to read
Guardian: All you really need to know about their thoughts is in the first few lines “On the surface, this third album from Doncaster’s cartoonish pop-punk upstart Dominic Harrison, AKA Yungblud, suggests a moody makeover. Firstly, it’s self-titled – artist shorthand for the “real me” – while the cover art swaps 2020 chart-topper Weird!’s kooky cosplay for a simple image showing a crestfallen Yungblud. Thankfully, it’s all a pose, with the oversized, Billy Idol-esque opener The Funeral featuring slurred lines such as: “I’ve got a fucked up soul and an STD.” They praise The Funeral, Tissues, and Cruel Kids, and put down I Cry 2, Die For a Night, and Sweet Heroine, and gives it a 3/5 stars However while they praise the songs that maybe have more of the influences and the “Bratty quality” that everyone says is there in previous stuff (though I certainly dont see it in Weird!), but they then gave Weird! A 2/5 stars for whatever reason.
Pitchfork says “The English singer’s third album promises eccentricity and personal revelation but delivers anonymous, uninspired pop-rock” and “On Yungblud, Harrison leans almost exclusively into saccharine pop-rock, making this his most monotonous and least distinctive record. He is still struggling to come up with a song that doesn’t already ring a bell: From a bastardization of Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” (“The Funeral”) to watered-down imitations of the 1975 (“I Cry 2”) and One Direction (“Don’t Feel Like Being Sad”), Harrison has never sounded less like the boundary-breaking eccentric he vehemently aspires to be. He’s well aware he isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s not because of his unfiltered bad boy image. On Yungblud, it’s simply because the cup is empty.” Pitchfork basically says that the cohesive sound does him no benefits because it kills the originality. Gives The album a 4.5/10, whereas Weird! received a 5.5/10. Basically they don't like him much.
Now, I’ve been slowly weaving a narrative with this, mentioning how many critics agree with me on the objectively best songs, but trash on my favourites, most places say this is an improvement and put down Weird!, but a scarce few say this is basically about or almost as good, but misses some qualities that Weird! had that made it great, in the vain hopes you would eventually scream to the heavens “WELL WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK?”....
Did it work?
Probably not, but I’m still working out the kinks on album reviews, give me some time. But yeah, my hope was you get here and are dying to know what I think of these reviews, the album as a whole, and how it does in comparison to Weird!. Well here it is….I disagree with each and every fucking one of those reviews, though I do like what NME and Rolling Stone said about it.
First of all I love Yungblud (artist and album). I think its songs are good, its lyrical content is great, it’s melodies are beautiful, and I find that unlike certain albums in recent memory with heavy influences (you better fucking believe I’m writing something about P!ATD’s Viva Las Vengeance, and it might be better (or worse) than you might expect). It’s not hurt in any way by its heavy leaning influences, in fact it benefits because those influences were always there and now they get the spotlight, which is a good thing here.
The only quality of this being a more “pop oriented” album that weighs on this album is the song lengths, the album just makes it to exactly to 33 minutes, barely passing Palaye Royale’s 26 minute 8 song album “Boom Boom Room Side B” and just about matching Bring Me The Horizon’s 9 song Post Human Survival Horror EP, which clocks in at just over 32 minutes. Now, maybe its only because the individual song lengths on this album are shorter, having some songs barely surpass a minute or two, after all, Weird! only was about 5:45 longer, but in particular I’m thinking of Set It Off’s new album from early this year Elsewhere, which despite never reaching the 4 minute mark on any song, always clears 2 minutes per track, and is 16 tracks long, leading to a 48 minute album. I think like Elsewhere, Yungblud often manages to have short songs by cutting bullshit and fluff from certain songs, not because shorter playtimes means the song can be streamed/played on radio more times in a day, and cheaper costs (And this is a problem, the industry, especially if you are connected to the pop sections at all, is putting pressure on stuff like shorter runtimes, but we need to live by stuff like when Queen brought Bohemian Rhapsody to the radio, at 5:55 in length, and when the radio said no, Queen compromised, by getting the track on the radio at full length anyways because fuck the status quo and all that good stuff). But particularly on Mad I do wish Yungblud had maybe brought back the prechorus “When all of my life's been set to your time, It will be fine is a criminal lie, Outta your sight and outta your mind, Ain't where I wanna sit down and reside 'cause” or something to give this song an extra 15 seconds or something, and honestly with three songs that dont reach 2 minutes, a 13th song on the standard version of the record (especially where we can likely assume Fleabag being on the japanese edition means its not for album 4, and the Emperor probably is a standalone too) it would be nice to have had at least fleabag on there, seeing as it would have easily fit nicely after The Funeral, on either side of Memories, after Mad, after Sex Not Violence, or even maybe before “Dont Feel Like Feeling Sad Today”. The Lonely and the Broken is another song he could have put on here too (again, if it's not slated for YB4). But let's be honest, that's not really a criticism, just me bitching to fish for objective statements to give.
Also I think while with Memories I can't imagine it being better with just Dom on the second verse and no Willow, but I don't think it makes the song and I sure as hell don't think Willow outshines or is somehow better than Dom and therefore makes the song hers somehow. I think having her there gives the song an amazing chemistry, and I think its the chorus melody, the way that Yungblud and Willow individually handle the pre chorus, and the electronic, synthy sounding guitar line that sneaks in after the first line or two of each verse, that makes the song.
Now for the loaded question: Do I think its better than Weird?... I almost wished I didnt have to answer, because I know I might offend with the answer, and also that I’ll need another page worth of writing to explain why I feel the way I do.
So here goes: No, in no way does Yungblud outperform Weird!, but Weird! isn’t better than Yungblud either. I daresay its because I may always subjectively prefer Weird! Because of the context of what it was and the timing of where I was in life when Weird! came out, but that objectively Yungblud does easily match, and maybe surpasses, Weird!. I think that these albums are, in my opinion and for the intents and purposes of what I am to say next, twin albums, and are equally good. Because I think these albums are both exploring two very different ways that Yungblud views the same subject: Identity. Weird!, is about all of us, it’s how we are different things to different people, how we are basically all, to quote Yungblud himself “15 people at once” it was like playing characters, showing what we see when the lights are on, a continuation of what he started with the underrated youth, and that album truly was for us.
Yungblud, on the other hand? Is about him, it's about bringing those fifteen people any one of us are, off of the scrapbook page to bring the old photo of Dom in his teens with his friends back into view. This is not so much trying to blast out from the rooftops everything that Yungblud is and can be, and more giving us a handwritten love letter explaining who Yungblud is, when you condense it down to the core element. Its the difference between being part of a huge friend group that Dominic Harrison hangs out with and being his best friend and roommate, like the equivalent of family (or perhaps a romantic partner?). I mean obviously I’m not Dominic Harrison, but thats how I feel.
Anyways, this is now going to be the first album review, the “rambles about absofuckinloutely everything to do with the album” format. The Death Of Peace Of Mind is the “Track-by-Track and Verdict” method, and Viva Las Vengance will be “Standouts & Skips, album wide musings” method. After I see what people like more, I’ll use that method for all albums moving on except for ones I feel deserve this heavy of a review.
Grade: 99, for now, until I decide if its the same or better or not as good or anything
I'll finish the formatting later, I'm drained from writing this.
Tyler.
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