Twenty-three year old Dominic Harrison, better known as YUNGBLUD, is an alternative-rock singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist from Doncaster, England. At fifteen, he came to London with a single goal: tell the truth. When he started telling the truth, people started listening to him, and then they begun to tell the truth back.
He’s never been afraid to be different, and his second album is no exception. Titled weird!, this album is focused on the fans that he’s encountered since the first album. These songs are their stories, giving them a voice even when they may feel that they have none. For Dominic, YB isn’t a single entity — YB is us…a community of people coming together to belong. It’s about humanity and equality for every person, no matter what color, size, shape, gender, and sexuality.
An excellent example of this unity is the single, “mars”. He was approached by a young transgender girl in Maryland. She told him her story of how her parents couldn’t understand that she wasn’t a boy. They simply couldn’t grasp that she had always been their daughter. She explained that she saved up to take her parents to a YUNGBLUD show to see others like her…people from every walk of life, proud and energetic, simply being themselves and not giving a f*ck. Her parents were finally able to accept her as their daughter, thanks to being introduced to this community.
Watch the official video for “mars” here:
Dominic also addresses self-love on this album. On the ballad “Love Song,” he sings, “Nobody taught me how to love myself, so how can I love somebody else? There ain’t no excuses, I swear that I am doing my best.” Coming from a background of domestic abuse, his idea of love was seeing his parents fighting physically so he wanted no part of it. But then he met someone who changed his perception and reinvented every feeling he had ever felt. It didn’t end so well, but it didn’t matter because it reset him.
There’s always pressure for a second album. The first album was so angry, about people not understanding who he was his whole life. weird! is about those people who are weird, or different. weird! is an in-your-face explosion of energy, and an album for the weirdest years of our lives. It’s for those suffering with gender identity, sexuality, heartbreak, love, and those who feel like they don’t belong. No one can prepare you for these things, but we can go into it together. And that is exactly what YUNGBLUD is about.
weird! was released December 4th, from Locomotion and Interscope Records.
