Perhaps to counter suggestions that he’s a fake; a caricature; an industry plant, Dominic “Yungblud” Harrison announced this third album by getting a tattoo live on the internet. He had his personal “manifesto” etched onto the skin over his ribcage: “Never compromise. Imperfection is perfection. Embrace the strange. Never judge. Tell the truth. Pink socks. Beer. Move.” It was on that part of his body because he’d heard that’s the place where tattooing hurts the most, “and it pains me the most when people misunderstand me and people misunderstand us”.
“Us” being the fervent fanbase known as the Black Hearts Club. To them he’s a lifesaver, the one who shares and articulates their worries about shaky mental health and oscillating sexuality that the older generations largely fail to grasp. To those older generations, if they’re aware of him at all, he’s a lipsticked pain in the neck, especially irritating on his hyperactive genre-jumping second album, Weird!, cynically repackaging musical shocks of the past for an audience too young to remember them. It was unsurprising to hear that this former Disney Channel actor recently had auditions to appear in biopics of both Boy George and the Sex Pistols.
