An epic nine minute anthem marks the return of the globally recognised singer-songwriter and industry disruptor, Yungblud. The 27 year old artist from Doncaster, whose last two albums went to number 1 in the UK, broke the Billboard top 100, and whose catalogue has accumulated 6 billion streams globally, ended a period of silence online, releasing his most accomplished piece of music to date. ‘Hello Heaven, Hello’ (listen here) follows a lineage of Great British classic rock medleys in a composition that spans a number of the genre’s styles, evoking both the past and future simultaneously. Never one to follow the crowd, Yungblud proves himself to be one of the country’s most imaginative young songwriters through this release.
Remarkably, the song’s conception arrived four years ago, before the making of 2022’s UK chart smash self-titled ‘Yungblud’, and during the final run on an exhilarating but strenuous tour for 2020’s ‘Weird’. Rather than revelling in a new found commercial approval, the artist (real name Dominic Harrison) was alone in a New York hotel room, ruminating on the potential creative pitfalls ahead of him. “I felt like I was starting to repeat myself – I’d fallen into my own cliche… 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”.
This aversion to predictability explains his choice of a return; ‘Hello Heaven, Hello’ does everything but fit the prescribed brief of a traditional single. Instead, it showcases the level of songcraft and musicianship Yungblud is capable of, paying homage to the genre’s greatest moments along the way.
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