Yungblud didn’t hold back after Howard Stern told him “rock is dead”.
The Zombie rocker pushed back hard on the idea, insisting the genre is thriving in ways that older generations fail to recognise.
Appearing on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, the host declared: “I’ve been feeling lately like rock is dead, you know? And it makes me sad because I love rock and roll music.”
Yungblud disagreed, explaining: “Rock music is so brilliant, and it gets its flowers in hindsight because it’s such a sacred genre.”
He argued that the disconnect often comes down to nostalgia rather than reality.
Yungblud went on: “Every dad says, ‘I don’t like that band. It sounds like a band that they knew as a kid.’ You know what I mean? Every dad says to his kid, ‘I don’t like that. That sounds like what I knew.’ It always happens.”
The 27-year-old star went on to reject the long-running narrative that one artist must single-handedly “save” the genre.
He said: “People always put so much pressure on one person bringing it back. ‘Who’s going to save rock and roll?’ And that’s a load of bulls***.”
For Yungblud, the current landscape is far more exciting and diverse than the likes of Stern and KISS frontman Gene Simmons suggest.
Listing off some of the rock acts leading the way in their subgenres, he continued: “It’s spherical at the minute.
“In hardcore you’ve got Knocked Loose and Turnstile, in punk you’ve got Amyl and the Sniffers and Lambrini Girls, in indie you’ve got Fontaines [D.C.] and Geese and Wunderhorse.”
He also pointed to his own new album, Idols, as proof that ambitious, theatrical rock still has a place. Yungblud said he set out to “bring a sense of theatre and showmanship and adventure and nine-minute songs back in a 2025 way.”
The Fleabag singer added: “And it was a f****** risk, man.
“When we went in to play the first single, which was nine minutes, to the labels, I went f****** green. But I think we were in a place where we have a community, we have a culture, we have a fanbase that will go with us. It was mad to do but to see the amount of people that have got behind it and loved it has been f***** up.”
