(upbeat music)
- Yeah, so many new album's out!
And I am literally like buzzing.
I've been running around.
I haven't slept for weeks.
It's like a little Dom's jumped out me mouth
and he's like, "Ah!"
And he's running around the kitchen.
I've been holding onto this album so dearly
and so deeply for so long,
so to have it out in the world is just like,
kind of unfathomable in my head.
I feel like I can put me art on a plate
so someone stabs it, or someone spits on it,
someone's gonna plaster it up
or someone's gonna clean it up for me.
This album is legitimately about every kid,
from every continent, of every color,
of every shape, every size, every sexuality,
and every point of view
and the defiance within my generation to be
100%, unapologetically ourselves.
I think growing up,
especially in the North of England, man,
it really gave me a sense of community.
The way I looked and the way I dressed
gave me something to kick against.
And it's almost like
it gave me purpose,
even though it hurt me.
Me old man used to have a guitar shop.
So there's legit a picture of me, six hours old,
on top of me dad's counter
in a car seat, holding a Beatles ukulele.
So I couldn't really have been an accountant man.
I'd walk into the shop and like see an 18 year old
with a nose ring and I'd be like,
"I want to be just like you."
I remember like going to school
and I wanted to paint me nails like the lads in the shop.
I remember it was own clothes day,
'cause in the UK, you don't get to wear
your own clothes, you have to wear a uniform.
But once a year they'd do own clothes day.
But I remember the teacher said to me,
"Boys don't wear nail polish,"
in front of the whole class.
And that felt like a proper punch in the gut to me.
But I'm always really thankful of it,
because it gave me a desire to want to get out.
It gave me a desire to want to build a world,
just because I couldn't exist in the world
that was surrounding me.
I wanted to build another one.
And I just wanted somewhere to belong.
And especially like,
my first album,
it was a call out being like,
"Is there anyone out there like me?"
And it turned out there was a lot of people
out there like me.
I always keep in contact with me fan base.
I always speak to them.
And they were saying to me the other day,
when we go to a YUNGBLOOD show,
amongst the chaos and the pandemonium and amongst the
sheer madness, is this element of calm
that wants the energy so like rah!
And there's like five to 10,000 people in the room going,
"I can be myself!"
My fan base are legitimately the start, the middle,
and the end of the story.
So I don't want to make music for a
sort of motive.
I want to make music for a reason.
I want to write an album
for the weirdest years of our lives.
I wanted to write an album that was so truthful.
I wanted to write an album about identity
and about sexuality, about gender, about depression,
about drugs, about love, about heartbreak, about acceptance,
about every single thing that we go through, like.
I just wanted to write an album
that was so unapologetically truthful,
even if it gets me in trouble,
because I owe 'em that.
The people I've met
and the stories I've heard have just like
reinvented every single feeling I think I've ever felt, man.
The most important song on the record to me is
a song called "mars."
And this resembles this community
in three and a half minutes.
It's about a young transgender girl I met in Maryland.
I could remember, she had green lipstick on and a mask,
she was (indistinct) and wearing like wood chippings.
And she told me that her parents
just couldn't simply understand that she was,
and always in fact had been,
their daughter, and they thought it was some weird,
alien aesthetic attention seeking phase,
and it made me so sad because she was just so
caught up because she just wanted to be who she was.
And she said, she said to me, she was like,
"I just, all I could think of in my mind was I just need
to get me parents to a YUNGBLOOD show,
'cause then they might see other people like me."
She got good grades
and saved up so her parents have no excuse
but to come to the show with her.
And they came
and they other people like her.
They saw passion, they saw the energy.
They saw the simple reluctance to be anything other
than who or what they were,
and they took her out for a burger after the show
and they accepted her as their baby girl, man,
and to me that just,
like blew my mind because
what I want to radiate and what I want
to say is YUNGBLOOD ain't me, YUNGBLOOD is not me.
YUNGBLOOD is us, YUNGBLOOD is we, it's,
I don't know, Tom in London.
It's like, it's a community, man.
It's like, it's not about a song.
It's not about like digits
and numbers and meh, whatever.
I mean, it's not about that,
it's legitimately about people.
No one will get your vision,
I don't think, 100%, except you.
Directed the video for "mars," yeah.
I was involved with everything.
I was like,
they, each one of those incredible people
brought their own story.
This song, and this video, and the video to them wasn't
just a song about trans rights.
It's a song about defiance.
There's metaphors of racial inequality in that video.
There's metaphors of sexual harassment in that video.
It's not, it's so literal
and so metaphorical at the same time.
It was so moving to make, man, like.
I'm pretty like, eh and whatever and silly all the time.
But in that room, like I see it like torch.
All the light and all the "wah"
just went into a laser beam
and we all just went (claps) bang.
Yeah, there's two songs that I'm really curious
to see what people think, they are
"love song" and "the freak show."
It's like, YUNGBLOOD wrote a love song, what?
But I experienced that
and that was just as real as anything I'd ever felt.
It was real and it was more powerful.
It was like, blow, blew my mind.
I had a bit of violence in me growing up.
I won't go into it too deeply,
but I was always loved as a kid.
Me and my sisters were always very much loved.
But sometimes the idea of love,
when you watch your parents fight
and everyone in me school,
you know, I mean, everyone in me school is the same.
So I mean if people weren't talking about that,
they were lying.
And I was like,
if this is love, I don't want anything to do with it.
And then I actually fell in love and it
completely changed my whole perception of it
and turned my world inside out.
And it's exciting and I learned so much about
my sexuality and the person I was
with taught me so much about like the world that was like,
my head opened up into a claw,
and kind of saw all the cool bits,
and that ended
and that didn't turn out so good,
but I'll never regret it,
because it taught me so much about myself.
And I wanted that song to be a mate
to someone who's falling in love
and it's like yeah, (beep) this is crazy.
Or a shoulder to someone who, when it's like.
I just got me heartbroken, meh.
Do you know what I mean?
And then the second one is "freak show"
because this is, I just went mental on this.
I was like, I'm just gonna do whatever I want.
We're gonna mix Eminem with Queen, with Gaga, with Bowie,
with Panic!, with Run DMC,
with Beastie Boys.
You know what I mean?
I was gonna mix all these genres together,
and there's that line at the end,
"Times will change and you might break,
but I'll spend the rest of my life believing in you."
Can't wait for everyone to hear that line
because that just,
that's what YUNGBLOOD's about.
What is my perception of new alt, new alternative?
Freedom, express yourself,
be different without censorship.
It just finally feels like
rock's doing something again.
And the day rock died and got so boring
because it was just like
four idiots in leather jackets eating too much guacamole
and drinking too much sparkling wine
and singing about nothing.
And like having a God complex that we're gonna
save the scene.
There cannot be a scene without people
and friendship and support.
Everyone was like
looking over each other's shoulders,
who was gonna save rock?
You just gotta be mates and make great stuff
and support your best friends
and say something that matters.
I love Ashnikko,
I think she's brilliant.
Obviously I love Kel, 'cause he's my best mate.
and my brother.
Bbviously Travis is like Papa Trav,
like guiding us to the fields of arc and rye.
Yeah, I don't know what that means, but rock-n-roll.
Maggie Lindemann, I think she's sick right now.
I love the Fontaines D.C.
It's just so much.
It just feels fresh and new and exciting again.
Winning Bust Push Act at the EMAs was like
proper like Christmas morning, man.
It was like rock and roll Christmas.
And Dave Grohl was like running around with a pitchfork.
You know, I mean, it was like to have that intro
from Dave Grohl was like crazy,
like I picked up the guitar because of him.
Touring's mad at the minute.
The virtual tour has been crazy.
I just want to resonate the idea
that just because we can't talk to each other right now,
don't mean can't feel each other.
I just wanted to come to different cities
and allow people to come to see,
it's virtual, that they've never come to
'cause each show of mine has a different culture.
And then announcing an international tour,
a real international tour, a year away.
And the tickets just went mental,
shows area selling out already
in the biggest venues I've ever played
and it's a year away.
It's crazy.
Have a happy day. This is MTV.