Yungblud released a live version of his song ‘its quiet in beverly hills,’ for Vevo, premiering on his Youtube channel today. This follows versions of ‘mars,’ and ‘superdeadfriends,’ also for Vevo as Yungblud begins the difficult process of promoting his latest album ‘weird,’ with live music still impossible across the vast majority of the UK.
‘It’s quiet in beverly hills,’ is a more laid back performance in contrast to the high energy ‘mars,’ and ‘superdeadfriends,’ which are bristling with punk and brit-pop attitude and in-your-face energy. ‘Its all quiet in beverly hills,’ is reminiscent of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged set with its cello and acoustic guitar arrangement. While Yungblud is much more cheerful than Kurt Cobain even during emotional numbers like this one, where the two are similar is that they were both unapologetically themselves both as people and as performers.
The video’s description describes Yungblud as a ‘young glam rock star,’ and is without a doubt easy to see a young Marc Bolan or David Bowie in this acoustic guitar strumming Brit who shares their taste for makeup, androgyny and alternative sexuality. With Declan McKenna putting a more innocent spin on the era, and Yungblud bringing the energy of punk rock to the scene, there is no doubt that 80s Glam Rock is making a comeback, and it is happening through the Indie Rock scene.
The sense is very real when watching these live videos which have been appearing on Yungblud’s Youtube channel every day since Tuesday this week and only shortly after the official release of ‘Weird!’ that Yungblud would really like to be out gigging the new album to his adoring fans right now, but instead nearly all of us here in the UK are stuck in a situation barely any different from the national lockdown which gave us one of the bleakest Novembers in recent memory, perhaps with the exception that one might now wander into a local record store and pick up a copy of ‘Weird!’ from a real life person.
According to an article written for the official charts, ‘Weird! is on course for Number 1 on this week’s Official Albums Chart, ahead of Arctic Monkeys’ new live album and global superstar Shawn Mendes’s fourth record. This would be a huge deal for the UK Indie scene which has not seen its share of major album success since the Arctic Monkeys broke through with ‘Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not,’ and it would be a great boost to the North of England who have suffered so hard throughout this crisis to see another of their natives break the big time.
Despite quietly lining up a UK number one album, Yungblud does not seem to be playing by the rules of the music industry establishment at all, and this is beautifully refreshing. He is exceeding liberal with his creativity and content with three live videos dropping in the past three days, right after an album release, this isn’t major label code of conduct, this is something new entirely!
