Yungblud “needed” to record his latest album near his family.
The 27-year-old singer worked on Idols in Leeds, North England, just a few miles from where he grew up, because he wanted to be around people who didn’t care about his stardom and aren’t afraid to give him their honest opinions.
He explained to The Sun newspaper: “I needed to go back north, to family. Because when you write a record with family, they don’t give a f*** about hits, they don’t give a f*** about radio.
“All I want is the truth out here. My mum will tell me when I’ve been a d***.”
The Hello Heaven, Hello singer wanted the record to sound “unmistakably British”.
He said: “I love British music, British art — and I’m so happy to be British. I don’t think there’s enough British music at the forefront of the British music industry right now, so I wanted to make a record that sounded unmistakably British.”
Idols, Yungblud’s fourth LP, is something he started writing four years ago after his album Weird! topped the charts but he admitted the people around him tried to get him to work on something else in order to capitalise on his commercial success, but he’s proud he figured out his direction on his own.
He said: “I was dissuaded from doing Idols after Weird! because Weird! was so commercially successful.
“I went and worked with a load of songwriters — and when you do that, you’ve got seven people a week telling you what Yungblud should do next. I had to figure that out for myself.
“I didn’t want to make vapid songs that sound great on the radio. Yeah, we’ve got a couple of f**king radio bangers on this record, but I wanted to make one album that’s a through line — classic and timeless.
“There’s no gimmicks, man. None. This is me leaving everything on the table, showing the world what I can do.
“That’s why I orchestrated everything. I did everything I could to make it as deep and five-dimensional — lyrically and musically — as I possibly could.”
“I’ve been all over the world and spent a lot of time in America, but for this album I needed to come home.”