YUNGBLUD’s third album, Yungblud, released on Sept. 2, delivers powerful themes of rebellion and loneliness while attempting to produce catchy tunes. YUNGBLUD’s signature upbeat tempo and punk rock style is splattered all over the album, yet it also contains somber melodies that reveal his emotional struggles.
The self-titled album begins with “The Funeral,” the lead song that was released as a single in March. The track sets the tone for the rest of the 12-song album with its description of “I’ve been dancing at my funeral, waitin’ for you to arrive.” The dark lyrics encapsulate YUNGBLUD’s struggles with disappointment and self-acceptance, thoughts that many young adults share.
“YUNGBLUD incorporates popular techniques such as repeating lines during the chorus”
The next couple of tracks, “Tissues” and “Memories,” grapple with tumultuous relationships and tragedy, highlighting the reality of dealing with love as a teenager or young adult.
Throughout the album, YUNGBLUD incorporates popular techniques such as repeating lines during the chorus in an attempt to make the songs stick. Although certain melodies are quite catchy, he fails to fully integrate pop rock with the complex self-reflection that the lyrics express. This results in a series of tracks that deviate from the roots of punk rock but ultimately doesn’t deliver anything extra.
One theme that permeates the album is YUNGBLUD’s sexual fluidity. First explored in hit single “Parents” in 2019, this aspect of his identity is expanded in the song “I Cry 2” with lines such as “Everybody online keeps saying I’m not really gay.”
The songs in the album get progressively slower and more melancholic. The upbeat tempos of the first few tracks sharply contrast with the softer tracks in the latter half. “Sweet Heroine” begins the transition beautifully with a soothing piece about appreciating somebody who has helped him.
The track contains just his calm voice without much accompanying instrumental, bucking the norms of traditional rock music and allowing YUNGBLUD to express himself in an authentic way.
After “Sweet Heroine” is “Sex not Violence,” which, along with “Don’t Feel Like Feeling Sad Today,” returns to punk rock themes of taking initiative and anti-violence. The opening lines of the latter song sum up these ideas: “Why are we sitting in silence, wondering how we can beat all the violence?” The two songs provide listeners with YUNGBLUD’s unique vocals and lyrics, which is what has made him a rising star in the past few years.
“The songs in the album get progressively slower and more melancholy”
The final two tracks in the album are much more low-key compared to the fireworks at the start of Yungblud, showcasing another side of the singer: a soft, vulnerable person rather than the flashy persona that he normally embodies. Specifically, the concluding track, “The Boy In The Black Dress,” describes a teenager bullied at school by his teacher and classmates and trying to shed these experiences as he grows older. The last lines of the song reveal the identity of this boy as YUNGBLUD, depicting him as someone struggling with their identity like many do: “From the grave to the cot, how I wish that I forgot, that the boy in the black dress is me.”
Musically, this third album is a culmination of all that YUNGBLUD has done in his young career, including elements of the punk rock that he is known for as well as ambitious pop music components. The lyrics of the album burst with themes of opening up to the world and allowing others to see who he really is, including all his successes and mistakes.
Yungblud does not hold back, exposing the English singer to a wider audience and allowing him to further reveal and explore himself in the future. While the execution is certainly not flawless and the ending is unfulfilling, YUNGBLUD’s efforts to make a piece of music that satisfies himself and his audience as well as his vulnerability warrants lots of praise. For that reason, YUNGBLUD’s new album Yungblud deserves a solid three and a half stars.
