“A lot of people have a lot to say about me,” Yungblud says in the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now. “But I think that’s what I’m here for. It doesn’t get me down. I think it’s fun. I love reading the comments about me. It’s just fuel.”
Haters aside, Yungblud seems to have found himself — and won attention from seemingly every veteran rock star — with the classic-rock vibes of 2025’s Idols, which scored him two Grammy nominations (along with another one for his performance at Ozzy Osbourne‘s final concert). In the episode, he talks about his road to that album, the two new albums he has in the works (part two of Idols, plus a totally new effort with Andrew Watt), his EP with Aerosmith, and much more. Some highlights follow; to hear the whole discussion, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above.
Part two of Idols will arrive “imminently.” Yungblud reveals the album will open with a song called “I Need You to Make the World Seem Fine.” He shares some lyrics: “Pictures of idols rise up and fall/Wish you knew it all/Lift your head from the pillow, you’ve been missing enough/Built yourself a wall.” He describes the shift between albums: “The first part is about self-reclamation and flying, learning how to get your wings. The next bit is the real realism — how do you live in the real world as this person you’ve discovered? It’s a little bit more cynical.”
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Yungblud knew how much was at stake in his performance of “Changes” at Osbourne’s final show. “I knew this moment was such a David and Goliath moment for me,” he says. “25,000 people didn’t have a fucking clue who I was. 15,000 to 20,000 of them hated me — definitely ‘poser,’ whatever the fuck you wanna call me. And then about five to 10,000 people fucked with me. But I was ready for that because I’d just made an album where I had to face myself. I walked on the stage and I almost discovered how to lay myself bare, relinquish any ego or insecurity, and just say thank you to my hero.”
He was in frequent touch with Osbourne shortly before his death. “It’s been the biggest emotional wave I have ever had to deal with,” he says. “The past three weeks before he went, we were on the phone, we were texting, we were calling, we were vibing. I was trying to get to know this guy that I’ve loved since I was two years old. That I’ve basically written an album about — him and Freddie and Mick and Bowie. And then I lose him. It was almost like I manifested all this shit when I was writing this album. It’s a fucking trip, man.”
He openly hates some songs on his 2022 self-titled album. “‘Don’t Go’? Hate it,” he says, adding that the album had “no journey, no cohesive through line, no sense of identity. I listened to too many people. I listened to what people wanted from me as opposed to what I wanted to put out. In hindsight, that was the album where I was lost. That led me to Idols. That was the wake-up call.“
He never wishes he was in a band instead of a solo act. “Fuck no,” he says. “Because I got to make the decisions. I think art shouldn’t compromise. When I’ve listened to opinions and met someone in the middle, my art’s been shit. That’s why so many bands are in such massive turbulent relationships for years — because a bridge part that you opened your soul and gave to the world was cut by your counterpart.”
His next album with Andrew Watt will be much more raw. “Idols was extremely maximalist,” he says. “What me and Watt wanna do is extremely minimalist. We really wanna make it sound live, band-y. We might not even record to a click. I’ve been listening to [Jeff] Buckley and [Chris] Cornell and [Scott] Weiland, going into this zone of ’93 MTV Unplugged, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana. My favorite thing Bowie said was, ‘I would look at the last album and go completely the opposite way.’ If you’ve got three minutes and five chords and the fucking truth, what are you gonna do?”
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His recent EP with Aerosmith came together naturally. “A lot of rock stars hit me up after ‘Hello Heaven’ came out,” Yungblud says. “Brian May hit me up. Joe Perry hit me up.” He flew to Florida to meet Perry, and Perry mentioned that he and Steven Tyler had been talking about getting back in the studio after Tyler’s vocal injury. “I was like, ‘Let me be involved in whatever capacity — I’ll be a writer, I’ll be a producer, whatever you want,’” Yungblud recalls. “They were like, ‘We like how this album sounds adherent to the past, but completely new. Will you give us a bit of that?’” The collaboration bore fruit quickly: “If you’re on a first date, you’re either gonna fuck or you’re gonna hate each other. Within two hours, ‘My Only Angel’ came out.”
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Yungblud also hit it off with Eddie Vedder at a recent all-star corporate gig. “Eddie’s such an inspiration to me, especially vocally,” Yungblud says. “I think we might write together in the future.”
Like seemingly every rock fan, Yungblud is into Geese. “I love Geese,” he said. “I think they’re fucking great.” He sees them as proof that rock is thriving from multiple directions again: “To me, Geese are a rock band. Even though to me they sound like early Strokes, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen — that’s where they’re coming from, but to me that’s rock. To me, Elton John was rock. Michael Hutchence was rock. INXS was rock.”
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone‘s weekly podcast, Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Check out nine years’ worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth interviews with artists including Mariah Carey, Bruce Springsteen, Questlove, Halsey, Missy Elliott, Dua Lipa, Neil Young, Snoop Dogg, Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Rick Ross, Alicia Keys, the National, Brian May, Roger Taylor, Ice Cube, Taylor Hawkins, Willow, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Killer Mike, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Liam Gallagher, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, John Legend, Donald Fagen, Charlie Puth, Phil Collins, Justin Townes Earle, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Eddie Van Halen, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, and Gary Clark Jr. And look for dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates, and explainers with Rolling Stone‘s critics and reporters.
