Fun fact: were you ever to frequent Doncaster’s public transport system back in the day, you may have spotted a young Dom on the bus. There, he would have been listening to Rush, and their legendary 1976 fourth full-length 2112. Eighteen minutes into the Canadian prog masters’ epic (which was still the opening title-track) Dom would then depart the vehicle, because he knew that’s exactly when his stop was. So engrained it was in his brain that a specific second of music became a subconscious signal.
This is the sort of impact he’s aiming for when it comes to his new album.
“I didn’t write this record to be spun 15 times a day because it’s two minutes long – I want to make it a part of your life,” he stresses. “I think we have this thing right now where songs come into our lives, we rinse them because they’re like sugar – they’re vapid, they mean nothing, and it surface-level affects us, but it doesn’t cut us deep.”
His forthcoming LP is as real and honest as YUNGBLUD has ever been. Written in a local – and potentially haunted – Leeds studio with Dom’s long-time guitarist Adam Warrington (“We’ve been together since we started this thing at fucking 16 years old in a squat in Clapham South”), producer Matt Schwartz and composer Bob Bradley, Dom was asked of one thing, and one thing only, when it came time to put pen to paper: the truth.
“A songwriter in LA wants a hit, but you write a record with family, and they don’t give a fuck how it sells – it’s about, ‘You’re my best mate, tell me something fucking real,’” he says. “For me that was hard, because I have to let people in. We spend so much time hiding. When you start at 18 and you’re full of fucking spunk and gusto, nothing affects you. But then you read things online about your body, and about the way you talk, and that you’re fake, blah blah. It starts to grind on you, and the more you hear, the more you hide. The more you hurt, the more you hide. You hide, and you hide, and then you start to play a character. And that’s why I had to stop after the last album, because I was playing a fucking character.
“But these three people were having fucking none of it. They’re like, ‘Fuck that. Who are you? Who the fuck are you?’ It was amazing – they allowed me to fly, and to gut myself. They’d be like, ‘Nah, we don’t buy it, go deeper. Fucking go deeper.’”