Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
An unexpected highlight of The Great Escape was Yungblud, aka Dom Harrison, a 19-year-old singer-songwriter from Doncaster who put on the most exciting, energetic show of the festival, fittingly filled with enthusiastic industry types. Musically he’s a young Jamie T meets Arctic Monkeys, and his look is Harry Styles with an edge. He has the charm of a pop star and the swagger of a rock star. He played a set full of anthemic songs with memorable, chant-along hooks, and even managed to start a moshpit in Brighton’s posh South Lanes. Yungblud’s debut single King Charles has been described as a protest song, with anti-establishment lyrics that demand a voice for young people. The singer backs up this message with political tweets, written in his strong Northern accent. Early wins have included spot plays on Radio 1 and Radio X, and a slot in Spotify’s New Music Friday, thanks to the support of his management Locomotion and agents CAA. King Charles is the only song online so far, but clips of him performing Tin Pan Boy and Park Hill Romance give a sense of his live show. These high energy tracks were balanced in the set by Polygraph Eyes, a more sensitive moment that speaks directly to men who prey on drunk girls. If you’d asked me last week what the music industry was missing right now, I would never have described this, but all the elements add up to make perfect sense for 2017.