Yungblud has returned to music with an epic nine-minute single.
The 27-year-old star ended a period of online silence by dropping new anthem ‘Hello Heaven, Hello’, which follows a lineage of Great British classic rock medleys in a composition that spans several of the genre’s styles.
He said: “Rock music is in my DNA. It’s the first genre I was ever exposed to; I grew up in a guitar shop with my Dad and my Grandfather.
“Rock music helped me find an identity as a human being.
“[‘Hello Heaven, Hello’] is a journey of self-reclamation – a goodbye to the past and how you may have known or perceived me before, and a ‘hello’ to the future and where I’m going.
“It’s an adventure that is sonically more ambitious than ever before – a journey that is meant to be played in its entirety, never holding back or allowing its imagination to be filtered.”
Yungblud – whose real name is Dominic Harrison – admitted he was “discouraged” from releasing a nine-minute track as his first piece of new music for a year, because he was told it was a “risk”.
However, he sees it “as an opportunity”.
He added: “I’ve been discouraged from releasing a nine-minute and six second song as my first move back in a year because, in the modern world, it’s seen as a ‘risk’.
“I don’t see it that way at all – I see it as an opportunity.
“In my opinion, risk is an artist’s greatest tool – putting everything on the line in pursuit of the best evolution and art you can create. Without risk, there is no innovation.”
The artist came up with the idea for the tune four years ago, when he was alone in a New York hotel room during the final run of his tour for 2020’s ‘Weird’.
He added: “I felt like I was starting to repeat myself – I’d fallen into my own cliché … I’d become comfortable.
“It was good in a way; it meant that I had my own style. But I’ve always said that if people know where I’m going next, that is my idea of failure.”
The song is accompanied by a music video by Charlie Sarsfield, which has made its global broadcast premiere across MTV’s global network of channels.