The Ritz, ManchesterThe androgynous Yorkshire artist serves up an over-the-top spread of emo-rap and glam anthems aimed at the under-21s
Chants of “Yungblud! Yungblud!” start up before 22-year-old Dominic Harrison hits the stage and deafening audience screaming greets his entrance. He bounds on, all black clothes, chains and eyeliner, looking like a young Gary Numan auditioning for a part in John Carpenter’s Halloween. He jumps three feet in the air while singing as the young audience heroically try to do the same. Then he wiggles his tongue at them like Kiss’s Gene Simmons and pelts from one side of the stage to the other, yelling: “Manchester! Let’s go!”
Despite the obvious forebears, the Doncaster-born star has a distinctive USP: a fast-rising, androgynous, cross-dressing emo-rapper with a South Yorkshire accent as broad as Brian Glover’s PE teacher in Kes. “It’s good to be back in the fuckin’ north, like,” he says. Yungblud’s songs address everything from teenage concerns and parents (“It’s alright, we’ll survive / ’Cause parents ain’t always right”) to drugs, mental health and “perpetual frustration”. Finding an audience, he says, saved his life when everyone else was calling him “freak or weirdo”.