Yungblud has treated his fans across the pond to a special live performance of ‘mars,’ when he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday. Despite being recorded remotely, the performance is energetic and truly live feeling shot in a gothic underground setting. The performance is an endorsement of the Indie Rock values which Yungblud represents with a touch of Glam Rock opera.
After a brief intro following Yungblud around the dimly lit underground recording location, the singer finds himself in front of a mic, strumming his guitar before the lights are raised to show the rest of a four piece band behind him, all visibly playing their instruments and without a backup dancer in sight. The authenticity of Yungblud’s music and performance is certainly a strong factor in is appeal and something which his audience likely values very highly.
Although one of the lesser know singles from Yungblud’s ‘weird!’ album released December 2020, ‘mars,’ has become a cult favourite amongst his fans with the official video reaching over 3.5 million views on Youtube since its upload on the 27th of November, shortly before the album release.
Despite all of the difficulties that musicians have faced in 2020, Yungblud has gone above and beyond to make the year a success, from hosting his own chat show to producing hit singles and profoundly impactful music videos which force listeners and viewers to call everything into question and challenge deeply held beliefs. The hard work has paid off and in December 2020 Yungblud achieved his first ever UK number one album when ‘weird!’ has finally released after months of mounting excitement amongst fans.
The wave of success following the release of ‘weird!’ has placed Yungblud on a firmly upward trajectory and he has found him self in demand for TV appearances on some of the biggest shows out there, from New Years Eve performing ‘Cotton Candy,’ live on Top of the Pops, surely a dream that appearance any young musician has entertained at one time or another, to performances on hit shows like Kimmel’s over in the states where his audience also seems to be growing.
Although many of us had hoped that life in the UK would be starting to go back to normal for the New Year, we are instead looking at another three months of lockdown which means no gigs until the spring at least. Fortunately Yungblud, like many other British artists such as Dua Lipa who’s ‘Future Nostalgia,’ album has now been out for more than a year now with no tour, seem to have foreseen this and postponed any gigs in 2021 until the summer.
There does of course remain a large question mark over the status of live music in the government’s priorities for 2021 with many large festivals seeking government funding to make their events possible this summer, for the time being all we can hope for is that this year will indeed see the return of live music to hour shores where it has been so sorely missed.
