Justin Hawkins has compared Yungblud’s Ozzy Osbourne tribute to “what a male stripper would do”.
The Darkness frontman has joined his brother Dan Hawkins in blasted the MTV Video Music Awards tribute to the late Black Sabbath icon over the weekend, which saw Yungblud share the stage with Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.
Speaking on his Justin Hawkins Rides Again podcast, he said: “It’s like you’ve watched a movie about rock and metal, it’s like what a male stripper would do.
“It doesn’t ring authentic… It’s rock n’ roll, but not as we know it.
“It kind of has this Disney veneer over the top of it, like it’s rock n’ roll seen through an Instagram filter of some sort.”
The I Believe In A Thing Called Love rocker accused the 28-year-old musician of “positioning himself as a natural heir to the Ozzy legacy” without having a connection to “the really important stuff”.
He argued: “I suppose one of the things that irks musicians of a certain age is to watch Ozzy invent heavy metal, then turn into this household name with the television series and his decades of being brilliant, and then you kind of think ‘What the f*** does all those decades of having this incredible legacy got to do with Yungblud?’ ”
Justin also drew unfavourable comparisons to 2003 Jack Black movie School of Rock.
He added: “All of this posturing is Jim Morrison meets the bloke from Stone Temple Pilots meets everybody else who’s ever owned a pair of leather trousers.
“It’s 101 School of Rock stuff, you know? It’s the latest in a long line of – I’m sorry to say it – poseurs…
“For seven minutes, the world is looking at rock and this is what we’ve given them.”
Yungblud opened the tribute by singing Crazy Train and Changes with Nuno on guitar, and they were then joined by the Aerosmith duo for Mama, I’m Coming Home.
After the performance, the quartet embraced and Yungblud shouted: “Ozzy forever man!”
Dan fumed on Instagram: “Another nail in the coffin of rock n roll. Cynical, nauseating and more importantly; s***.”
Seemingly referring to Yungblud, he added: “Makes me sick how people jump on this s*** to further their own careers.”
He also captioned a clip from Mama, I’m Coming Home: “What a bunch of b***ends.”