Yungblud
Dominic Richard Harrison, known professionally as Yungblud, is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His debut EP, Yungblud, was released 19 January 2018. His debut album, 21st Century Liability, was released on 6 July 2018 and his second EP, The Underrated Youth, was released 18 October 2019.
Early life
Dominic Richard Harrison was born on 5 August 1997, in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, to parents Samantha Harrison and Justin Harrison. He has two younger sisters Jemima Harrison and Isabella Harrison. His grandfather, Rick Harrison, performed with T. Rex in the 1970s. He studied at Arts Educational Schools, London and starred in "Emmerdale" and "The Lodge" before beginning his music career. He can play guitar, piano, drums, and tambourine. He was put on Ritalin at an early age, but his mother asked for him to be taken off because it took away his personality.Career
2017–2018: ''Yungblud''
On 7 April 2017, Harrison released his debut single "King Charles", which Tenement TV branded "a protest song for the disenfranchised working classes", along with a music video for it on YouTube, On 15 September 2017, he released "I Love You, Will You Marry Me", he explained to Triple J that the song is "a comment on corporate companies trying to make money out of something as precious as love". On 10 November 2017, he released "Tin Pan Boy", a song about the construction project on Tin Pan Alley, a musical hotspot place in London; in January 2017, a deal was sealed to refurbish new buildings within the area. On 13 December 2017, he released the music video on YouTube. On 19 January 2018, Harrison released his debut EP, Yungblud, the EP features the previously released singles "King Charles", "I Love You, Will You Marry Me" and "Tin Pan Boy".2018–2019: ''21st Century Liability'' and ''The Underrated Youth''
On 19 January 2018, he released "Polygraph Eyes" from the EP, a song about sexual assault against girls; speaking to PILERATS, he explained "I used to go out in the north at 14 with a fake ID, and see these drunk girls stumbling out of nightclubs with boys that weren't nearly as drunk as they were...I didn't realise that it was wrong until I'd grown up, until I moved down to London and saw the world from a real perspective.". and speaking to Harper's Bazaar, he stated that "it needs to be spoken about from a male perspective, to dilute and smash the shit of this lad mentality that's been so vastly accepted.". He released the lyric video for the single on 20 February 2018 to YouTube. From 12–30 March 2018, he supported K.Flay on her "Everywhere Is Somewhere" tour. On 14 March 2018, he released the music video for "Polygraph Eyes" to YouTube. On 10 May 2018, he announced that "Tin Pan Boy", from the EP, and "Falling Skies" featuring Charlotte Lawrence would be on Netflix's 13 Reasons Why Soundtrack for Season 2, and on 18 May 2018, the soundtrack for 13 Reasons Why was released. On 28 May 2018, he released a visualiser video, featuring him and Lawrence on a couch with special effects in the background, on YouTube for "Falling Skies". On 14 August, he released the official music video featuring Lawrence for the song on YouTube. On 6 July, Harrison released his debut album, 21st Century Liability. On 10 August he released an EP, containing seven acoustic versions of songs from the debut album, called Yungblud . From 20 September 2018 to 20 April 2019 he toured for his debut album, with Arrested Youth joining his American dates and Carlie Hanson joining the UK and Europe dates.On 17 January 2019, he released the single "Loner" along with the music video to YouTube. "Loner" was co-written by Harrison with Karl Michael, Matt Schwartz and Robbie McDade. On 14 February 2019, he released the single "11 Minutes" with Halsey and Travis Barker, a song that "tells the story of a perfect tragedy that reflects modern love within our society". The music video premiered to YouTube 21 February 2019. He released his first live album Yungblud 22 March 2019. On 3 May 2019, he began his "Don't Wanna Be a Loner" tour, the tour concluded with mostly festivals, ending 31 August 2019. "Parents", originally titled "Parents Ain't Always Right" was the first single released from The Underrated Youth EP. It was released 24 May 2019, and described by Yungblud as "A tribute to individualism", stating "You are the best judge of how to become the best you. Don't conform to the outside world's perception of who you should be if it means losing yourself in the process". "I Think I'm Okay" was released by Machine Gun Kelly, Harrison and Travis Barker on 7 June 2019, the music video was released 14 June 2019. On 23 July 2019 he attended the premiere for Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw. On 26 July 2019, the soundtrack was released, the first song on the soundtrack is his cover of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle". On 29 July 2019, the single "Hope For the Underrated Youth" premiered on BBC Radio 1 during Annie Mac's Future Sounds as Annie Mac's Hottest Record in the World. On 18 August 2019, he announced the single "Die a Little" along with a release date for 23 August 2019. On 24 September 2019, the music video for "Hope For the Underrated Youth", directed by Andrew Sandler, premiered on YouTube. "Original Me" featuring Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons, was announced by both artists on 4 October 2019, through their social media and was released 8 October 2019. On 9 October 2019, Harrison announced via Twitter that a video for "Original Me" would be released. The video premiered to YouTube 10 October 2019. "The Underrated Youth" EP was originally scheduled for release 11 October 2019, however, Harrison pushed back the date, asking his fans for more time on the EP because an unspecified song was not right. He later confirmed the song to be "Casual Sabotage" while tattooing a fan. The EP was then officially released 18 October 2019.
Harrison announced on 17 May 2019 that he was releasing a comic book entitled "Twisted Tales of the Ritalin Club", which he had been working on for a year prior to the announcement. He partnered with Z2 Comics for the release of the comic book, the deluxe version was made available to purchase from their site only and the regular version of the comic book was made available to purchase from Amazon, as well as other places afterwards. He attended MCM Comic Con on 25 October 2019, he did a Q&A with fans, talked about upcoming projects and signed copies of his graphic novel.
Harrison and Reynolds announced on 21 October 2019 that they would be performing "Original Me" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On 31 October 2019 he premiered the music video, also directed by Andrew Sandler, for "Die a Little" on YouTube, stating "realizing and accepting the dark part of your mind that is trying to get out", "People who don't understand what you are going through will try to interfere and generalize what you're feeling. That can end up with them getting as hurt as you. This video is a call out to take mental health seriously". The song appeared on the soundtrack for the third season of 13 Reasons Why, making it the third time a song written and performed by him is on the 13 Reasons Why soundtrack.
In an interview with Capital FM, Blackbear revealed that he had a collaboration with Harrison and Marshmello. The collaboration was revealed to be a song called "Tongue Tied" and was announced to be released 13 November. "Tongue Tied" was released 13 November alongside the music video, starring Joey King, on YouTube.
2019–present: Upcoming projects
On 3 December 2019, Matt Schwartz, posted photos of himself and Harrison on his Instagram, with the caption stating that they were working on the second studio album in Spain. On 21 January 2020, he announced a North American tour of the same name of his EP. The tour is scheduled to start with Coachella on 12 April 2020 and end 18 May 2020 with Hangout Festival. He was nominated for four NME awards: "Best British Solo Act", "Best Music Video" for "Original Me", "Best Solo Act in the World" and "Best Collaboration" also for "Original Me". He won "Best Music Video" for "Original Me". On 4 March 2020, Harrison announced that he had cancelled his Asia tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. and Coachella's organisers then announced that they postponed the music festival from April to October also due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After his shows got cancelled, in 72 hours, he came up with the Yungblud show, so he could still give his fans a concert experience. Speaking to Vulture, he said "Having the opportunity to connect with them taken away from me wasn't gonna be an option. So I was like, "Let’s livestream a gig online."" Gavin Gottlich, his manager, posted a screenshot of the Vulture article to his Instagram, stating in the caption that it started as Harrison telling him "let’s do a live stream concert from my iPhone" and "turned into a complete monster production", when The Beehive LA, a management and production company, came to help. On 22 April 2020, he released "Weird!", which marked the start of a new era in his career. In a press release he stated "I wrote the song about the weirdest time in my life ever imagined. I felt like the ground beneath me was a maze that was shapeshifting and I felt like I was going to fall down the cracks and, in my opinion, the world feels exactly like that right now. I wanted this song to make everyone feel that everything was going to be alright no matter how weird things get.". Speaking to NME he also said "I was going for an LCD Soundsystem and Depeche Mode thing. I wanted a naivety to the song because this is a coming of age record, the past 18 months were so weird for me." Speaking to Clash Magazine he stated "But...so much shit happened. Everything was weird. 'Weird, weird, weird...' kept going through my brain. I nearly lost my mum in a car accident; I was in a relationship and my heart broke. We got fucking really big really quickly. Suddenly you wake up one day, you go for a run, and there’s a fucking guy following you around with a fucking camera."On 1 July 2020, he revealed a hair color change alongside the words "see you july 7th". On 6 July, fans found a poster in their respective cities, the poster read "Suck On My Strawberry Lipstick" in pink writing. Later, he shared a video to his social media which depicted him, dressed in a Union Jack flag, setting fire to the straitjacket that he wore in the album art for 21st Century Liability, alongside a caption signifying the end of the 21st Century Liability era and the start of a new one. On 7 July, he announced through social media that he had a new single coming on 16 July called "Strawberry Lipstick". On 14 July, he shared two photos of himself and Jesse Jo Stark on his social media in reference to a music video for the single, the same day BBC Radio 1 announced that they would premiere the single on 16 July. On 15 July he shared a teaser of the music video to his socials, which featured himself and Stark. On 16 July "Strawberry Lipstick" was released, and the music video premiered on his YouTube channel 2 hours later.
Activism
On 24 March 2018, Yungblud attended the March For Our Lives rally, a student-led demonstration rally against gun violence after the events of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. He streamed 3 minutes of his attendance live to Facebook and was filmed using a megaphone to speak through while walking amongst other people.On 30 May 2020, Yungblud attended 4 days of the George Floyd protests for Black Lives Matter in California. On the first three days he attended with his ex-girlfriend, Halsey, on the fifth day he attended with Machine Gun Kelly and Mod Sun. He attended a Pan Pacific protest with Halsey, which she live streamed 26 minutes of on her Instagram. The next day, 31 May 2020, they attended a Santa Monica protest, which they both had prepared to be medics, with first aid kits, for emergency medical assistance for protestors shot by "non-lethal" rubber bullets. He later praised her on Twitter for being "selfless", "brave" and "fearless" while providing medical care to protestors, and she returned the praise on Twitter, and personally thanked him for running "exposed in front of rounds being shot to drag wounded people to safety without even thinking twice". They attended a protest on 2 June 2020, but did not say where they were going. Elijah Daniel livestreamed on Instagram, and stated that he was going to meet up with them, who he mentioned were at the Hollywood and Vine protest, as they had the medical kits and people were being shot at. They were also photographed attending the protest at the intersection. On the fourth day, 3 June 2020, he attended a protest in Los Angeles with Machine Gun Kelly and Mod Sun reported on by The Daily Mail.
Personal life
Harrison was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age, which made him a troublesome student. He was suspended from school after a dare from his friend to "moon" his maths teacher.In February 2020, he spoke to the Evening Standard and admitted that he had attempted suicide twice after going through a series of positive and negative events in his career.