{"id":6026,"date":"2021-01-17T22:48:57","date_gmt":"2021-01-17T22:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/?p=6026"},"modified":"2021-01-17T22:49:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-17T22:49:00","slug":"yungblud-releases-more-anthems-for-the-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/2021\/01\/17\/yungblud-releases-more-anthems-for-the-strange\/","title":{"rendered":"YUNGBLUD Releases More Anthems for the Strange"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On December 4th <\/sup>musical artist YUNGBLUD, AKA Dominic Harrison released his new album weird! <\/em>to the public, and to say it directly, the album is great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harrison\u2019s music has been rooted<\/a> in the theme of encouraging the different, the crazy, the alternative, and the angsty. Weird! <\/em>follows suit\u2014 it\u2019s filled with a variety of sounds that still ring true to Dominic\u2019s style of music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first single, \u201cweird!\u201d<\/a> was released on April 22, 2020, at the height of the pandemic where the word \u201cweird\u201d rang a little too true for the entire globe. \u201cCome hold my hand \/ Hold it tight \/ We\u2019re in a weird time of life\u201d–what would 2020 be if it was not a \u201cweird time of life.\u201d All around the world we have been stuck in our houses with little-to-no contact with people outside short interactions between grocery-store employees and constant Zoom calls. YUNGBLUD likely wrote this song before the pandemic, but similar to listening to a song about heartbreak when you are eight vs. when you are 22 and your partner just broke up with you, the lyrics have a different meaning because of the new context. A pandemic? Definitely weird. Mental health is disintegrating all over the globe<\/a>; introverts are realizing they have been ambiverts the whole time. 2020 was the year of \u201cweird\u201d and having to remind ourselves that we need to hold on even if the entire globe is experiencing despair. I listened to this single so much when it first came out, it ended up in the top 15 of my top 100 playlist put together by Apple Music. That being said, that does not necessarily mean that \u201cweird!\u201d was the best single Dominic released to introduce his sophomore album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStrawberry lipstick\u201d<\/a> and \u201ccotton candy\u201d both<\/em> felt like true<\/em> YUNGBLUD songs. My absolute favorite part about these singles is how both are made to blast from your speakers and the lyrics are made to scream from the top of your lungs. It\u2019s a lot of sex, drugs and rock & roll with lyrics like, \u201cShe\u2019s such a tease\u2026 She\u2019s gonna suck on my strawberry lipstick\u201d and \u201cSo we just have sex, to solve all our problems, let\u2019s do it again\/And I wanna get stuck between your teeth like cotton candy.\u201d The themes are reminiscent of the groupie-culture common in the early rock-n-roll and Woodstock eras. Free love, lots of drugs, no commitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other songs like \u201cmars,\u201d<\/a> \u201csuperdeadfriends,\u201d \u201ccharity,\u201d and \u201cice cream man\u201d are full of angst, all honing in on the societal pressure to fit in, supporting those that go against the grain like YUNGBLUD himself. Many of Harrison\u2019s songs tell variations of the same story: feeling like you are alone in the world, dreaming of a better life without judgment, and the overall theme of \u201cf**k \u2018em, who cares if you\u2019re different.\u201d While I think this is a powerful theme, I do hope that YUNGBLUD begins making some more politically-charged and controversial songs like his tracks \u201cKing Charles\u201d<\/a> and \u201cTin Pan Boy\u201d from his first self-titled EP released in 2018. Internal acceptance is important.<\/em> However, he could really flourish with more of the original-punk anti-establishment theme, it might even expand his demographic of listeners to more millennial and even older generations of punks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I found different about this album in comparison to Harrison\u2019s previous endeavors was including more introspection rather than only outwards projections to his fanbase. \u201cI\u2019m lost in the supermarket\/Shopping for my sense of self\/I wander down the aisles\/Trying to figure out\/Where I disappeared to.\u201d It felt like the perfect year to turn to introspection, especially since many of us have had to do more self-reflection than probably any of us ever wanted to during quarantine. Walking through the supermarket during the pandemic has felt aimless–there\u2019s little interaction, and for some of us, it has given us the fortunate (or unfortunate) space to analyze our thoughts, considering who we were, are, and who we want to be–wondering where the \u201cold-me\u201d went. The face-value analysis is just looking inwards, but the context of the lyrics reminded me of my spacey-walkthroughs of the grocery store, forgetting what I even needed because I am too deep in my thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lowkey songs on the album are peaceful, like a lullaby, but still harmonize with the rest of the tracks. I was actually surprised that \u201cit\u2019s quiet in beverly hills” was the penultimate song\u2014 it was so quiet and calm, it seemed like it would be hard to follow up it\u2019s angelic tone. However, YUNGBLUD impressed again by somehow transitioning to the best song of the album, \u201cthe freak show\u201d. The concluding song is reminiscent of Melanie Martinez\u2019s \u201cCarousel\u201d on Cry Baby. <\/em>Coming from someone who used to listen to that album on repeat in 2015, I can honestly say that YUNGBLUD\u2019s alternative punk \u201cversion\u201d won. The song is a mic-drop, and there couldn\u2019t have been a better finale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On December 4th musical artist YUNGBLUD, AKA Dominic Harrison released his new album weird! to the public, and to say it directly, the album is great. Harrison\u2019s music has been rooted in the theme of encouraging the different, the crazy, the alternative, and the angsty. Weird! follows suit\u2014 it\u2019s filled with a variety of sounds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":6027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265,32],"tags":[610,96,1020,823],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6028,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026\/revisions\/6028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}