NEWS
Yungblud and Florence Pugh served pints to fans in a central London pub to celebrate his new single, ‘Zombie’.
Released yesterday (May 30), the anthemic and emotional rock track is the latest preview of ‘Idols’ – part one of the Doncaster artist’s – real name Dominic Harrison – double fourth album, which is released on June 20 (pre-order/pre-save here).
Pugh (We Live in Time, Oppenheimer) stars in the powerful official music video for ‘Zombie’, playing a healthcare worker at her emotional brink, overwhelmed by grief and exhaustion.
To celebrate the collaboration, the duo surprised punters at The Devonshire in Piccadilly, central London last night (May 30) by putting in a shift behind the bar to pour pints of Guinness.
It’s not Harrison’s first time as a bartender – recent he showed up at his favourite London pub, The Hawley Arms in Camden Town, where he pulled pints for fans to mark the release of ‘Lovesick Lullaby’.
Check out the footage from last night below.
Yungblud debuted the song at an intimate gig at London’s Scala in March. He later said the ballad was about “feeling you’re ugly, and learning to battle that”, while detailing his experiences with eating disorders and body dysmorphia.
“The song was written initially about my grandmother going through serious injury and trauma, leading her to become a different person to who she was before,” Yungblud explained in a new statement.
“It’s about the feeling of deterioration and ugliness; shutting out the world and the people we love out of the fear of becoming a burden or an embarrassment.”
He added: “We all want someone or something to comfort us, no matter how we are right now or who we become in the future. But it’s fucking scary.”
The soaring, poignant single features a performance from the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
‘Zombie’ follows on from Yungblud’s previous singles ‘Hello Heaven, Hello’ and ‘Lovesick Lullaby’. ‘Idols’, described as his “most ambitious” release yet, follows the musician’s 2022 self-titled third album.
Last December, Yungblud exclusively revealed to NME that he had a “double album” on the way. “The new album centres around the idea of self-love and self-reclamation that allows people to feel seen, and emit this light,” he told us at the time.
“You can be seen for who you truly are, no matter where you’re from or what you believe… That’s what I needed to write an album about.”
During an earlier interview, he told NME that he had been inspired by the likes of Oasis, The Verve, Primal Scream, My Chemical Romance, David Bowie and Madonna on the Britpop-influenced LP.
Meanwhile, Yungblud has announced a brief run of intimate UK shows, dubbed ‘Idols – Up Close And Personal’. The dates follow the second edition of Yungblud’s BludFest in Milton Keynes on June 21, and come ahead of his ‘Idols’ headline tour in North America and Europe.
In other news, Yungblud, has criticised the current cost of festival tickets, saying he “100 per cent” agrees that prices have “got out of hand”. Harrison spoke about his vow to make BludFest 2 affordable for fans (£65), “because that’s the way it should be”.
“In this world, there is nothing you can’t achieve if you are doing it from a place of truth, and for the right reason,” Harrison said, having previously declared that “music should be accessible to everyone”.
Reneé Rapp is seen as a “huge inspiration” by SZA.
The 25-year-old artist performed SZA’s Good Days in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, accompanied by two acoustic guitarists and a harp player. SZA, 35, was deeply moved by the rendition.
She posted a short video of the moment on Instagram Stories and wrote: “Renee is a HUGE inspiration, energy, voice spirit.”
During her chat with the BBC, Renee shared her thoughts about the track. She said: “I mean, I love SZA. I mean, she was one of my favorite artists in high school. And she's remained one of my favorite artists to this day. I think she's amazing. She's also, I mean, she's an incredible songwriter, but I think because she has so much swag. People don't realize how good of a singer she is. She's a fantastic vocalist and is really, really, really articulate. And I don't cover a lot of songs anymore. So I wanted to cover something that was, like, slightly challenging and also really vocally impressive, and frankly, hard for me to do.”
Renee is currently in the middle of promoting her second album, Bite Me, and opened up about how much more enjoyable it was to create compared to her first project.
She explained: “I mean, I feel like everything was incredibly different. I stopped listening to people that don't make music, because if you don't make music, then why the hell am I listening to you. And I also think the biggest difference, I think I just got a lot better. I think I have just become a better songwriter. I think I understand how to make pop music now in a way that I didn't really before. And I was very sure about what this album was and thematically, what it needed.
“So I felt like I was quite like, headstrong in like, what was gonna work and what wasn't. Because, nobody knows something better than yourself. I think a lot of things were different. I also just, like, had a lot of fun making it, like, I made it with like, three people, mostly, like, it was always like, four of us in the studio all the time, and we got so close, and some of us were already so close. So it was also just like a mess. It was such a mess, like we were just tweaking every day. It was so fun. And I don't think I enjoyed making the first one as much.”
