Yungblud has hit back at some of his biggest critics in rock music, saying the artists who have been the most negative “didn’t necessarily reach the mountaintop.”
Appearing on the latest episode of the Rolling Stone Uncut podcast while in Sydney this month, the English artist opened up on the divisive reaction to his music that escalated after his performance at Black Sabbath’s final concert ever last year.
While he has since gone on to create music with Aerosmith and recently released a new version of his song, “Zombie”, with the Smashing Pumpkins, The Darkness’ Justin and Dan Hawkins, notably slammed Yungblud’s VMA tribute performance to the late Ozzy Osbourne as “cynical, nauseating and, more importantly, shit.”
“Rock music isn’t supposed to be a gate kept boys club,” Yungblud said on the podcast.
“And it became that, that’s why it was being suffocated and boring and so adherent to the past. We have to allow young people to pioneer something, or at least try to give this thing a heartbeat.”
He continued: “The worst thing that happened to rock was you were getting ridiculed for the reference point. Oasis sounded like the Beatles and they fucking loved that. They wore that as a badge of honour. Kurt Cobain loved John Lennon… I think to carry on this thing, and to reference it… it’s a beautiful fucking thing, and people ridicule for it and it just sucks.”
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He claimed that the negative attitude from older artists will deter new talent from rock music.
“My biggest fear is that they don’t, they get deterred from pursuing a career in it by some old bit of cunt on the internet,” he said.
“And I’m here to go. if you’re young, play rock. Fuck it.
“When you actually meet the legends like Steven [Tyler], like Ozzy, like Billy Corgan, they fucking want it. It’s only the people who didn’t necessarily reach the mountaintop who are gatekeeping the genre. So if you’re young and if you wanna start a band, do it with everything you’ve got. Reference who you fucking want to, believe in what you want to, block out the noise, have fun.”
Yungblud’s Australian tour wraps up in Perth tonight.
