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In this special-edition YUNGBLUD zine, Dom Harrison takes us through the making of his new album, the foundations he laid to get here, and why he’s taking things further than ever before…
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YUNGBLUD: “I needed to get my fight back. I’ve always been a fighter, and I’ve found it again”
On 2022’s self-titled third album, YUNGBLUD felt “more lost than I’d ever been”. Since then, though, Dominic Harrison has been putting in some seriously hard work, and as the 27-year-old gears up to launch a determined and defiant new era, he reveals how he’s coming back swinging…
- Words:
- Emily Garner
- Photography:
- Tom Pallant
“I ’m walking around all the time now with a 72-year-old woman,” laughs Dominic Harrison. “Everywhere I go it’s like, ‘Who the fuck is YUNGBLUD with?!’”
Said lady is the 27-year-old’s new “best mate” Mary Hammond, the esteemed English singer and vocal coach. This most unlikely of duos have been spending an awful lot of time together lately, because Dom has been taking singing lessons for the first time in his life.
“It’s been a real step up,” he enthuses. “I’ve been exploring my voice and where the fuck I can go. In the past, I’ve just led from emotion – I’d do a shot of whiskey, and it was almost animalistic. But I really want to be able to commit, so I put my money where my mouth is. And Mary is a fucking G, man! She’s worked with people like Chris Martin and Bono. I went to her house and she almost auditioned me. She’s fucking hilarious, and now she loves me. It’s weirdly not that hard to sing now, and she’s taught me how to do things even when my voice is fucked.”
It’s the day after Dom put these newfound techniques to the test, with a massive performance on The Jonathan Ross Show. Faultlessly tearing through a halved version of March’s nine-minute single Hello Heaven, Hello – “They wanted it down to two [minutes, for TV purposes] and I was like, ‘Fuck off, that’s sacrilege!’” – the singer is visibly giddy about being “back in the saddle” once again. And there’s even more to come, as he positions himself towards the window on the 10th floor of a fancy Kings Cross hotel, gazing out along Pentonville Road and the nearby Scala, where he’ll play a free show for fans later this evening.
Dressed in a typically sharp pinstripe suit, with sunglasses pushing away the hair from his friendly green eyes, Dom sips on water and twists around the gold ring on his little finger. He’s a warm, open and naturally happy presence, winking “nice T-shirt” as he catches K!’s Dookie tee the second we meet. By our count – and not including Green Day – Dom references 45 different artists, songs and album titles throughout the hour-long conversation that follows, such is his enthusiasm and remarkable encyclopaedic knowledge of music. (This does, though, pale in comparison to how often he says “fuck” and other variations.)
It’s a passion he’s put to effective use, as he prepares to unveil his long-awaited fourth studio album (we have been asked not to reveal its title). Work began all the way back in 2021, soon after Dom’s second YUNGBLUD record – 2020’s catchy Weird! – hit Number One in the UK charts. Admitting that the album contains just five tracks he “fucking loves”, he reflects today that he spent too much time amiably going along with others’ opinions, rather than assuredly stamping his own personality onto everything.
“I think I just got a bit like, ‘Alright, let’s see where this goes.’ But that’s not who I am,” he says, shaking his head. “I love exploring. I think that’s why people connected to us so much in the first place: because it’s a community filled with fucking adventure and unpredictability, but also unity within completely different people. But in hindsight I look back on it with a real smile – I’m lucky to have gone through that so early in my career. I don’t regret a thing, because it really made me never take no for an answer again. It helped me finish this album with the authenticity and the guts that I didn’t maybe have when I started.
“It’s been a strange time, and such a weird time, but it’s fucking been so fun,” he adds, leaning forwards and crossing over his pair of giant black boots. “It’s been painful, but also so interesting to learn about myself.”
“I don’t regret a thing, because it really made me never take no for an answer again”
Dom experienced a similar mindset shift following 2022’s YUNGBLUD album, too. Immediately after its September release, he found himself in a New York hotel room where he “came to”, artistically speaking. He’d realised there had been yet more compromise in that process, and he felt as though he was even becoming a “pastiche”.
“Reality hits you in the face,” Dom explains. “This place isn’t real, that I live in, a lot of the time – we’re in a million different countries, in a million different places, blah, blah. And I lost sight of reality. I think I got caught up. I was depressed. I reeked of insecurity. It’s my self-titled album, and I was more lost than I’d ever been – and that’s so YUNGBLUD, to fucking self-title an album but it’s the most lost album ever (laughs).”
While grappling with these mental pressures, Dom did manage to find relief in a physical sense. He was invited to a nearby boxing gym by the father of his now-ex-girlfriend Jesse Jo Stark – a rink run by “two fucking metalhead boxers who play Hatebreed and Lamb Of God and shit like that”. Little did he know that it would pretty much change his whole life.
“I don’t like going to the gym, but I really fucking enjoyed it,” he recalls. “I had a really good time, and I met a documentary maker called Pete Berg who had a British boxing gym in LA. I met a fighter, a welterweight champion from South Africa called Chris Van Heerden. His fiancée [Ksenia Karelina] is a dual citizen, an American-Russian ballerina who’d been detained in Russia because she gave 50 quid to a Ukrainian charity – she was charged with treason. So he was having a hard time, and I was having a hard time, and we found solace in each other with boxing. And I wasn’t thinking about anything else while I was there; all my anxiety and ADHD and crazy brain, I could take out on a punchbag.”
Dom noticed unexpected similarities between the sport and his onstage day-job. There’s the element of pacing yourself – of knowing “you’ve got 12 rounds” to get through. “Respect” is a factor, too, which this most committed of artists really values. Not to mention training with a mouth guard and learning to breathe properly, which he’s already put into practice in a live setting.
“When we did Jonathan Ross, I implemented that [technique],” he says. “I think it’s easy to bullshit your way through a performance by being energetic, but that’s not the game I’m playing now. I want to be the best – or at least try to be the best.”
Going deeper still, Dom reveals how much boxing has helped him cope with being a celebrity figure that “people either love or hate”.
“I walk into a public space, and I’m on edge because I don’t know if someone’s gonna be like, ‘I fucking hate your music,’ or, ‘You’re a c**t,’ or, ‘I fucking love you,’” he continues. “It was fine when I was 19 because it’s part of it, but when you’re 25, 26, it’s rough. It’s not very human. How the fuck am I supposed to respond to that?”
To be clear: Dom isn’t going to use his boxing talents to knock the haters out – “I ain’t trying to fight anytime soon!” – but what this does all symbolise is the start of an era of strength and power in the wild, whirlwind career of YUNGBLUD.
“I needed to get my fight back,” he says. “I’ve always been a fighter, and I’ve found it again.”
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.’”
That’s why the album starts with Hello Heaven, Hello, in which the best iteration of YUNGBLUD thus far properly introduces himself, and lets his listeners know, ‘There’s a chance I won’t see you tomorrow / So I will spend today saying hello.’
Led entirely by the music and the fearless ambition to create something classic and timeless, this is “the most real shit” Dom’s made since 2018’s 21st Century Liability breakout debut. The key inspiration was his rock roots, and the fact that he quite literally grew up in his dad’s guitar shop, absorbing everything to do with the genre. It was all about playing instruments – and later bringing in incredible additional flourishes by the London Philharmonic Orchestra – and fighting “like cats and dogs” over each note.
“It was the four of us in a room, making every single decision,” Dom smiles. “I really feel proud of my mates. Production-wise we made it together and we fought and we argued and we fucking fell in love. Honestly, it’s been amazing.”
From the beautiful, painful Zombie to the enthralling alt.rock of The Greatest Parade and the grand cinema of Ghosts Part I and II, he describes his new body of work as an “homage” to rock – but stresses that he crucially took things to a “new place”. Pointing to his pals in Bring Me The Horizon and their open love of Linkin Park, or Oasis pulling from “fucking The Kinks and The Beatles”, or how Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley influenced The Rolling Stones, Dom explains that, “Everyone is inspired by something, and you’ve got to take that inspiration and mix it around in your stomach.”
By the same token, he was also keen to ensure that it “couldn’t be adherent to any era”. And that all boils down to the emotion contained within.
“What makes something fresh is how it feels,” he continues. “Tiny Dancer is still fresh, With Or Without You is still fresh, Before I Forget is still fresh. If it feels emotionally rich, then it’s fresh. It needed to sound like that if the aliens fucking find it one day!”
When that time comes, what these extra-terrestrials will hear is a man who now whole-heartedly believes in his music. Despite the unsolicited opinions Dom’s faced over the years – be it via those aforementioned real-life encounters, or the rubbish people anonymously spout online – he’s been deliberately avoiding feedback, because it’s “really destructive for art”. Once the album comes out, he might read the dreaded comments. But he certainly didn’t during the creative process, at the risk of his vision being tampered with.
“If I look at a thousand comments that are great and then I see one that’s bad, it will affect my day,” he says. “It will make me carry it into this interview. It will make me carry it onto the stage. So I’m trying to really remain, like, ‘This is what we’re doing, and we’re gonna see it through.’ If you think about fucking Dave Gilmour putting out Dark Side Of The Moon on day one, people are gonna have something to say!
“I am very open, more than I’ve ever been for anything, and I’m just like, ‘You know what? People might love it, people might hate it, but I fucking get it and I love it and I feel it more than I’ve felt anything in my entire life. So let’s ride!’ It’s been weird – I feel weirdly calm. I don’t know why. I really believe it’s great. That’s a fun place to go from.”
Dom takes another gulp of water and excitedly slams his glass down, his voice getting louder with each passing statement.
“It’s different, it’s wild, it’s nuts!”
According to Dom, anyone can fake being a rock star. It’s not hard to pretend to act the part, and play up to tired clichés. Or, in his own words, “Any c**t can drink a lot and be a dick.”
That’s not what YUNGBLUD is about, though – it never was, and it certainly isn’t now. In fact, he’s shooting the opposite way, with his new record representing a bold career goal.
“This album is a real test for me to be like, ‘I want to try to be one of the fucking best rock stars of the past 40 years,’” Dom asserts. “It’s about, ‘Can you sing that shit? Can you fucking give yourself to this?’ Rock is the only genre you can’t cheat. It’s sacred.”
And it’s this idea that forms the backbone of his new chapter. Dom has long leaned on his impressive contacts list – from Ozzy Osbourne to Oli Sykes to “weirdly really close” pal Joe Perry – for help and advice. But now it’s time to become his own North Star.
“I’m actually turning to myself, rather than them, for the first time in my life,” he explains. “You’ve got to be your own idol. This album is where I take what [my own heroes] have given me, and leave them behind, and I turn it into a new sense of individuality. It’s like, ‘Thanks very much for that – now I’m turning to myself.’”
And Dom can say such things, because he’s walked the walk.
“I really thought it was over before this,” he admits. “I mean it. I didn’t believe what I was talking about. I was listening to that fucking noise too much. When you’re kind of a staple of youth at 27, it gets to a point where you remain a pastiche of yourself and you get lost in that era, and you’re in that fucking ’90s or 2000s playlist forever. Or you become reborn. Or you die. And all those things were on the cards – trust me. If I stayed in the same place, it would have been a spiral and something bad would have happened. I couldn’t have become pastiche of myself, because I think I’m better than that. So it’s always about rebirth. Even Green Day – that T-shirt you’re wearing. On American Idiot they were like, ‘People think we’re a fucking stupid punk band singing about stupid things, so let’s make an opera.’ For me, I was like, ‘Right, this is making me unhappy.’ Now I’m on a new adventure.”
“I couldn’t have become pastiche of myself, because I think I’m better than that”
He didn’t do it all by himself, though. With genuine love and admiration he credits his fans, and particularly those who attended 2024’s inaugural Bludfest: Dom’s lovingly-created, affordable festival at Milton Keynes Bowl last August.
“I needed to figure out what the name YUNGBLUD meant. And I did that by turning to them – as always,” he smiles. “I thought, ‘Right, there’s gonna be a reset here, but I need to say thank you first.’ They’ve given me a purpose and I needed to them not to look to me – I need them to look to each other, and to look at what we made. There’s 30,000 fucking people here. Look at what we’ve done, and what we’ve built.
“I turned up and I didn’t know what it was going to be, because the fanbase has grown and grown,” he continues. “You’d think it would be 30,000 19-year-olds in a field going mental, but it wasn’t. There were obviously people at the front going fucking nuts, but there was also families, mums, babies… And it made me fall in love with my name again, because it wasn’t a forced-upon idea. The name YUNGBLUD had been ridiculed for being punk, and it had been celebrated for being punk, and I fucking hated the word ‘punk’ by the end – it was like, ‘Stop calling me that! Stop boxing me in! I’m many different things.’ I was being judged on just that word. Bludfest became this thing where I fell in love with my name again, because it was like, ‘It’s not me – it’s this.’”
Now, he says, there’s a “a lot more Dom” in his new music than there is YUNGBLUD. After this immense, unstoppable snowball formed in 2018, these days he seems to have settled into a healthy separation between the two. And with any luck, it’s a place that means he can do this “forever”.
“It’s the beginning of a new chapter,” he teases. “And it was all part of a master plan – Hello Heaven, Hello is a goodbye. It’s questioning everything at the start, and then by the end I’m saying, ‘This is who I am. Hello.’ It’s a whole journey, and that’s the same as Bludfest: it was a goodbye and hello at the same time. And it’s not something to be feared when I say goodbye – it’s not like I’m never play those fucking songs again. Of course I am. But it’s gonna be different and it’s gonna be a new adventure, and that’s the fucking fun of it.”
As well as a “bigger and better” edition of Bludfest in August, Dom is currently plotting a huge world tour. Just as he and his mates put absolutely everything into this record, being on the road will be no different – particularly with Mary’s valuable advice in his ears, making YUNGBLUD sound the best he possibly can.
“We’ll be going on the biggest tour that we’ve ever embarked on,” he promises. “It’s crazy. I’m a bit nervous, but it’s gonna be sick. With this show, we’re going for full-on stadium rock ambitions.
“We made an album like this,” Dom grins, “so there’s no half-measures.”
Get your limited-edition YUNGBLUD Kerrang! zine.
YUNGBLUD’s new album is due out this year. Bludfest Year 2 takes place at the Milton Keynes Bowl on June 21 – get your tickets now.
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