The singer also said he's stripping things way down on a different LP he's working on with producer Andrew Watt, taking inspiration from Jeff Buckley, Chris Cornell and Scott Weiland.
Yungblud went all-in on his fourth studio album, last year’s Idols, which featured such big-swing rocking singles as “Lovesick Lullaby” and “Hello Heaven, Hello” and the churning ballad “Zombie” — recently revamped with a rocking assist from the Smashing Pumpkins.
But on an untitled upcoming album he’s working on with in-demand producer Andrew Watt (Ozzy Osbourne, Rolling Stones), the singer told Rolling Stone he is trading in the max for the min.
“Idols was extremely maximalist,” he told the magazine.“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.” Yungblud said he’s been listening to a lot of Jeff Buckley, Chris Cornell and Scott Weiland music, taking inspiration from a quote from David Bowie about looking as his previous album and going in the opposite direction.
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The first part of the album landed Yungblud a pair of Grammy nominations — for best rock album and best rock song (“Zombie”) — and he said the second part will arrive “imminently” and open with a song called “I Need You to Make the World Seem Fine.” Among the lyrics he shared from the song were: “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.”
“If you’ve got three minutes and five chords and the f–king truth, what are you gonna do?,” he added. “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.”
In an interview with NME last summer, Yungblud said teased that part two of Idols is “the dark and downward spiral to the inevitable realization that I’m not going to be here forever – who do I want to spend my life with? Mortality. Part two plummets you back down to earth, and it’s a little bit more cynical.”
