Yungblud and Willow have released their new collaborative track “Memories”. The pop-rock duet is expected to be featured on Yungblud’s upcoming third studio album. The single is available to stream on all major platforms now.
The pair’s new track was teased via social media in December last year, with Willow posting a picture of the duo working in the studio and hinting at new music. Yungblud also took to social media to tease the new release, the 24-year-old singer shared a similar picture to his social media stories. The British songwriter also took to Instagram to share news concerning “Memories”; “This song is about letting go of past traumas you may have experienced and voicing them to the world. There’s something freeing about turning painful memories from your past into lessons for your future – I want people to scream this song out and it be cathartic. It’s about coming together and shedding pain, turning it into positive energy and sharing the burden with each other.”
The duo’s new single was also released with an artistically produced music video and features both artists as the video’s leading figures. Directed by Colin Tilley, the emotive video captures the lyrical themes heard throughout the single and shows the singers as an estranged couple. Within an interview with Spin magazine, Yungblud discussed the new single’s lyrics, “The lyric ‘Every time I fall asleep, I know I’ll wake up alone. I wake up alone.’ It’s not about love. ‘Dreams of you were wrapped around my throat. I think I’m going to choke.’ It sounds like it’s about love, it’s not,” he told the magazine. “I spent a lot of time in my imagination growing up, because I needed to get out of fucking bullshit. I’d be playing with [toy] soldiers at 15, I was strange.”
Yungblud’s newest single has dropped two months after the release of his last track “The Funeral”, released on 11th March 2022. The single was the second track to be taken from his upcoming album. The singer also released a music video to accompany the song, directed by Christian Breslauer, the video featured cameos from the Prince of Darkness Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Yungblud and Willow’s musical dynamic first took shape in July 2021 when Willow appeared on The Yungblud Podcast. The artist’s discussed “rock’s evolution, the impact the music industry has had on their mental health, and how they’re reclaiming their voices”.
The musical pair’s discussed personal issues, Willow opened up about her own experiences with mental health, “For so long, I had a lot of fear, I felt extremely unsafe in my music career in the past and that feeling of insecurity or unsafety, like I didn’t feel protected, which just went really deep. It’s interesting because all of those memories and emotions have just been resurfacing, I was doing the Jimmy Fallon performance, and I had like a flashback of being like 10 or 9 and having an anxiety attack on set and basically feeling like everyone around me was like ‘You’re just a brat, why aren’t you grateful?’. They didn’t see it as an anxiety attack – they saw it as a tantrum, and now I look back and know it was an anxiety attack.”
Yungblud is currently on tour in Europe with his Live On Mars Tour, and will be performing his next set on 8th May 2022 in Luxembourg. After 17 more European dates, the singer begins a series of European festival appearances before continuing his Live On Mars Tour in New Zealand and Australia.
