YUNGBLUD AT TERMINAL 5 IN NEW YORK CITY
Photos by Sharon Groenow & Words by Meaghan D’Amico
If you’ve never seen Doncaster, England artist Yungblud live, it’s like walking through mass chaos in the best way - pure energy, genuine excitement and a lot of fun. Over the weekend, he played two nights at New York City’s Terminal 5 on his “Life on Mars” tour for the 2020 record, Weird.
Doors opened at 8pm and everyone was decked out in black, plaid, chains, and every other color, running into the venue to get a good spot and prepare for the insanity ahead. There were also a lot of flags wrapped around people proud of who they are. Yungblud preaches community and showing up to his shows as whoever you want to be and identify as, and this was absolutely apparent. The show started around 9 and the first artist to take the stage was Charlotte Sands, a relatively new artist, but her name has been around lately. She has been featured on songs with The Maine and Underoath. The lights went down and the already palpable energy in the venue cranked up. She opened her set with the voicemail from her mother that is part of a song on her newest EP, Love and Other Lies. She opened with the title track from the EP and introduced herself to the crowd. Two songs I love that she played were called “Bad Day” and her last song, “Dress”. Charlotte described “Dress” as a song about originality and being yourself, and that theme resonated all night. Every song on her setlist was a lot of fun and for being an artist that most people did not know, she got the crowd moving and dancing.
The direct support band was Canadian rock band Palaye Royale. They are a band with die-hard fans and all of the showmanship of old punk bands. I am not super familiar with the band as far as individual songs, however they were clearly having a lot of fun on stage and the crowd was very much enjoying it. Vocalist Remington Leith made sure to keep the audience engaged and further get everyone jumping. The second to last song was a cover that everyone knows, dedicated to “the teenagers in the audience”. The song, of course, is a cover of “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance. The cover is something the band has done before on Warped Tour and other tours. It was a good cover to further pull the crowd into the madness and up the energy before their final song, “Mr. Doctor Man”. When the set was over, the crowd was still buzzing with energy and ready to push it into full gear for the main set.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the stage went black and it was time for Yungblud. He is also known by his real name, Dominic Harrison, commonly referred to by the fanbase as Dom. If you’re part of the Black Hearts Club as the fanbase is called, they are one of the most passionate fanbases, and were absolutely more than ready to give as much energy back to Dom and his band as was being put out. The set started with red lips on the curtain, a la the beginning of Rocky Horror Picture Show, saying there were four simple questions “before the show could begin”. The questions were basically asking, “Are you ready to scream, dance and have the best time, and ‘celebrate love and unity?’” Once the screaming was happening after the questions, the curtain dropped, the lights flickered, and Yungblud strutted out on stage in his leather pants with the energy immediately at 100. The first song was the lead single from his latest record, “strawberry lipstick”. The crowd was whipped up further into a frenzy immediately and screamed back every lyric to Dom ten-fold. “strawberry lipstick” was the song that got me hooked into this new era of his music. The song is loud, raucous, and a lot of fun.
The second song of the set was another ripper that is a fan favorite. Yungblud said, “This is a song about parents not always being right.” “parents” is a song that not only huge amongst the fanbase, but also became huge on TikTok throughout the pandemic. For the entire song he was running around and was looking like he was having the best time on stage.
If you’ve never seen Yungblud live, his stage presence is unreal and not only will stop a song to get the crowd louder or do what he wants, but he literally does not stop moving. At some point he even asked if the crowd was ready to be crazy because he declared himself insane. He tried to open a pit for the two songs “superdeadfriends” and “I Love You, Will You Marry Me” that only sort of worked, but people were more than happy to try anyway. One thing that happened several times through the night was the crowd broke out into chants of his name, with just pure noise and love. He got overwhelmed and just stood there with a smile, absolutely shocked that there were so many people in the crowd. He stated, “I’m from the north of England and I’m in New York City - there are so many of you.” He explain that the song “I Love You, Will You Marry Me” was about “the North of England” which of course is where the town he’s from is.
Harrison has said the song “mars” is super important to him. It is super important to a lot of the crowd as well because much like the speech he made earlier about in the space of a Yungblud show, “You can love you want to love, identify how you want to identify and be whoever you want to be.” It is about being authentically yourself. He took a trans flag from someone in the crowd to hold up during the chorus of “mars” while it was just the crowd singing, “Is there any life on mars?” The story of the song goes that he wrote it after being told by a girl in Maryland on the last tour that she was not being accepted by her parents for being transgender, and wanted to show them the community of the show where she was accepted. The energy in the room absolutely changed before the song because of how close that song is held by the fanbase.
The next song was the title track from the record, “weird!”. This song was just as good live as I had imagined. The title track has a feeling about it though, especially after the last two years. Lyrics like, “We’re in a weird time of life… it’ll be alright” just seem to hit harder now.
”fleabag” is the newest song in his catalog right now, from a yet to be titled new record. This song goes so hard live and if it’s a taste of what is to come in the new record, consider me very excited. Before the next string of songs, there was a costume change to a leather skirt and The Cramps crop top he’s been seen in with a fishnet shirt underneath.
The best part of the set for me, was the surprise addition of one of my favorite songs from weird!, “cotton candy”. It was only about a minute or so of it, but we all screamed along as he played the acoustic guitar. This spot was supposed to be for the song “love song”. Myself, along with a lot of people in the crowd, were absolutely thrilled to see that song get pulled out as it had not been on a setlist all tour.
After that was another song off his 2018 record, 21st Century Liability, titled “Kill Somebody”. Even stationed behind a mic stand with a guitar, Yungblud is still dancing and encouraging singing along and participation. The crowd was more than happy to oblige, screaming every word along with him. The last song before the encore was “teresa” that Yungblud started on the piano. It made an already emotional song somehow more emotional.
Before the encore a guy with a sign ran out that said, “You want more?” and the crowd started chanting and screaming, clearly ready to jump around and scream some more. Once the guy was satisfied with the amount of chaos and noise, Yungblud ran back out and jumped right into “braindead!”. He again tried to get the pit opened up and didn’t start it until the pit was pushed far enough back.
The entire set went by so fast and despite the pauses for talking and checking on the crowd to make sure everyone was having a good time and was okay, the band lead by Yungblud sped at a breakneck speed. The second song in the encore, “god save me, but don’t drown me out” is one of my favorite songs on weird!. Near the end of the song, he just let the crowd sing the chorus, “God save, god save all of us” and it was magical.
Arguably one of his most political songs was last, “Machine Gun (F**k the NRA)”. The song is from the perspective of a shooter who talks about how he’s not mentally stable and the machine gun that he “bought for fun”. This song is of course a commentary on America and the issues we have regarding people who commit atrocities who definitely shouldn’t have been in the possession of a firearm in the first place.
To quote Yungblud himself, the show was, “absolutely mental”. The setlist was stuffed with fan favorites, newer music, and straight bangers. If the “Life on Mars” tour has not hit your city yet, I highly recommend going. From the Charlotte Sands set all the way through Yungblud’s set, there is so much energy, fun, and absolute chaos.