One aspect of the YUNGBLUD world that’s been connecting with plenty of fans is Dom’s triumphant new single, Weird!. He says it was written during what was, fittingly, “the weirdest time in my life,” and it makes for the perfect soundtrack to the strange and uncertain situation the world currently finds itself in.
Weird! does, however, have a meaning and significance that stretches beyond our present environment of social distancing and self-isolation. It’s a song that symbolises the version of weirdness Dom recognises in himself, how he’s “annoyingly energetic but slightly sad”, and represents the fact that “there’s always been an underlying feeling of anxiety to everything I do”.
When Dom describes the past 18 months of his life, all dizzying highs and despairing lows, it makes perfect sense that his latest output is characterised by feelings of both euphoria and despondency. From commercial and critical triumphs, and collaborations with huge names like Travis Barker and Marshmello, to a very public break-up with popstar Halsey, and the near-death of his mother, Weird! is born out of a time when Dom felt like all of his success was slipping away.
“I nearly lost my mum in a car accident,” he reveals. “I fell in love, had my heart broken and experienced real embarrassment through that heartbreak. After that, I fucked a load of people and explored myself sexually, but then I became more depressed and anxious. All that eventually led me to start taking drugs.”
Things all came to a head the night YUNGBLUD headlined London’s O2 Academy Brixton at the end of 2019. Everything was, on the face of it, going amazingly, yet in the days and weeks leading up to the show, Dom found himself feeling low all the time. In the end, it was a trip down memory lane that provided the reality check he needed to pull himself out of the mire.
“I thought back to how, two years earlier, my guitarist [Adam Warrington], my drummer [Michael Rennie] and I were living in a two-bedroom shoebox. We spent a night watching videos of the Foo Fighters at Brixton, and we all agreed that if we could get there, we’d have made it. Recalling that memory was a real slap in the face, because things had become so dark and strange, but going through it all meant that, ultimately, I grew up a little bit more.”