“Would this be the album you would expect me to make next?” Dominic Harrison, better known as perky pop punk YUNGBLUD, asks Apple Music. “Fuck no.” Idols is an ambitious, swaggering affair, from the nine-minute-long opener “Hello Heaven, Hello” to the heart-on-a-ripped-open-sleeve opus “Supermoon.” YUNGBLUD actually started making Idols, his fourth studio album, after his second, 2020’s weird!, but the timing wasn’t right. So he made 2022’s YUNGBLUD instead. Now, it’s time for Idols. “This is not an album for your head, it’s an album for your chest,” he says. “It’s five-dimensional. Limitless. Everyone’s had a lot of opinions about YUNGBLUD, which I think is beautiful, good and bad, because that means my art’s doing something to people. But I really want to show that I could orchestrate and I have imagination to use horns, brass, strings, and classical elements.” Idols swings from big, bold stadium rock to Britpop and melancholy (with guitar solos aplenty), so he’s not expecting listeners to find instant gratification. “I want this to be an album you put on every week for the rest of your life, because that’s what I do with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours or Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. I don’t just rinse a song that’s popping on TikTok for a month and then become bored of it.” Read on as he takes you through the album, track by track. “Hello Heaven, Hello” “‘Hello Heaven, Hello’ is the overture to Idols. This was the last song that came. Originally, the album started with ‘Idols Pt. 1’ and it wasn’t good enough yet. It was a nine out of 10 and I was like, ‘We need a spectacle. We need a prelude.’ It’s the bridge between the past and now: It’s how we arrive at people understanding why I made this album. I start frail and afraid. It’s like, ‘Hello. Are you out there? Do you know me? Do you love me? Do you hate me?’ Every time I’m on stage, I see the negative people who don’t like me, right in front of me.” “Idols Pt. 1” “This song is about me being a kid and having ambition and dreams. We used to play as kings, queens, rock stars, and nurses, but then we rationalize everything and let our light go out. The whole concept of the album is it’s not an homage to my idols, it’s actually me turning away from them. We recorded the album in a haunted old Tetley’s brewery in Leeds [about 35 miles from YUNGBLUD’s birthplace, Doncaster]. I had no issues with the ghosts, I made friends with them. There’s actually one moment in this song where it goes [mimics woo-like ghost sound], and that’s unexplainable.” “Lovesick Lullaby” “I always wanted to do Britpop in eyeliner—I was obsessed with Trent Reznor [Nine Inch Nails] and Brian Molko [Placebo], then The Stone Roses and Oasis. Here, I set up the listener going like, ‘This song’s a party.’ Before you know it, that pint of lager that you’re holding as you bop your head is up in the air and you’re jumping up and down. The biggest thing I’ve learned with writing is that I’ve always told the listener what the song’s about, so I wanted to make this more ambiguous. And I wanted to set up the idea that this album is going to twist and turn through multiple genres because that’s who I am.” “Zombie” “I’ve had this song for five years. This was the album that I wanted to do, but I don’t think I was ready for it. ‘Zombie’ is about being afraid to turn to others for help. The fear of being a burden. The fear of appearing weak or ugly. For the video, I wanted to do a direct portrayal of what a nurse goes through, because we take them for granted—they’re so understaffed and underfunded, and the NHS [National Health Service] is a bedrock for why our country is great. I needed to find a great British artist who could carry that story with truth and authenticity. That was Florence Pugh. I think she’s our best export at the minute.” “The Greatest Parade” “This was one of the emotionally hardest songs to write, along with ‘Change,’ so that’s why they’re both in the middle. I would see people outgrow YUNGBLUD or be mean on the internet, but I felt stagnated in my growth because I never had time to make an album like this. I never had time to stop. You write with songwriters, what happens is seven different people a week have an opinion of what you should do next. Everything’s great because they want a cut. Mediocre art can fly because you made it. Fuck that.” “Change” “The reason why I put this in the middle is because if I didn’t call the album Idols, I would have called it ‘Change.’ This has been the biggest transition point of my life and this song was the fundamental moment that I really faced myself and realized that I was not right. I think, being a ‘famous’ rock star, when you go into a recording session, people hang on your every word. But when Mati (Schwartz, longtime collaborator) and I are writing together, he’ll say, ‘No, you can do better than that.’ This was written before ‘Hello Heaven, Hello.’ It was midnight, and he’s like, ‘You’ve not let me see you yet.’ It’s about the words that I let get to me.” “Monday Murder” “‘Monday Murder’ is about apathy. It’s about everything going on in the world and the lack of unity and coexistence. We’d rather judge than accept and we’d rather fight than live in peace. It’s about how we watch the world go by instead of looking at each other and celebrating our differences. We wake up and we compare ourselves to 15 different people before we even have our breakfast. I love having a fucking dinner party debate. That doesn’t mean I love you less as a person if your political agenda or views are different to mine. You’re going to teach me something, I’m going to teach you something.” “Ghosts” “This is probably my favorite song to sing on the album because I can’t believe it’s mine. It’s the hardest vocal in the world, but I really wanted to show off my vocals on this album. Lewis Capaldi said to me, ‘Stop fucking rapping. Fucking sing on this album.’ Again, this one just poured out of me. I’m standing at the edge of my mountain with war drums ready to charge. It’s about realizing your own mortality on the banks of the River Thames after a night out at six in the morning. It felt like a stadium-rock song, but I wanted to push the boundaries of imagination, so I was like, ‘Do you remember The King and I?’ Then I added the three-minute outro.” “Fire” “‘Fire’ is about sex and aggression and that feeling you get when you’re about to be punched in the face or about to be taken into a bedroom. I was really wanting to explore my sexual side—I think that’s why my whole album campaign’s been topless. At 27, I feel comfortable as a man now and I really wanted to feel that sense of adrenaline with this record. It’s about sex and fighting and animalistic humanity: the fundamentals of why we feel anything at all. Why do we love, why do we hate, why do we fight, why do we fuck?” “War” “This is about people trying to dim my light. I’ve always been too ‘this’ or too ‘that,’ or people wish I would have stayed in one place. I’m so emotional, I’m so raw, and I’m so gushy. I wish I could be something else, but I just can’t. It’s been this dichotomy within me to be what the world wants me to be. This is also about that feeling when you become forgotten by somebody. You meant so much to me, but you forgot me so quickly. It’s hard to deal with.” “Idols Pt. II” “This is a little reminder of what the album’s about. It’s where the protagonist—you, me—this is where we start to win. After everything, after all the war, after all the internal struggle, after all the change, after all the rejection, after all the pain, we realize that only you will know what it’s like to be alone in your own life. It solidifies the message of the album: you have to be the idol in your own life. Stop giving other people the credit. Which leads into ‘Supermoon.’” “Supermoon” “This is the first song I’ve put out that I didn’t write. Mati wrote this for me, and he kept it a secret for five years. He’s been there since the beginning: He saw a 15-year-old kid come into his studio, who he kicked out because he had nothing to say. I came back a year later as YUNGBLUD. It was never a fucking character. I was a 19-year-old in pink socks from the north of England, pissed off about Brexit. That’s how that monster was born. He saw the world love me and then tear me down. When he played me this, I thought, ‘I don’t believe a human being on this planet has understood me more than that man.’”