YUNGBLUD, BLUDFEST REVIEW: It’s all been leading up to this. Seven years of toil, perseverance and unwavering belief, and YUNGBLUD is headlining his own festival. And to look around the Milton Keynes Bowl at all of the members of Black Hearts Club who’ve found each other here for this special occasion, a marker for how far and wide Dom Harrison’s call for community has stretched, is enough to get you quite choked up. And as YB himself struts out, demands that the pit gets pushed back wider and tears into a seething ‘superdeadfriends’, every one of those devotees loses all inhibitions. With this being such a momentous moment, plenty of elements, alongside the scorching pyro, allow it to be even more of a celebration than it already is. ‘California’ and ‘Anarchist’ take things right back to the beginning of this outrageous journey and sound even more fantastical now than when they first dropped, whilst ‘fleabag’ features three fans donning guitars and belting out its slack jaw riff for themselves. Then you have a stirring ‘mars’ leaving everyone dabbing the tears from their eyes, whilst ‘The Funeral’ and ‘strawberry lipstick’ further cement the fact that they were written solely for stages of this size. With each beat, you can feel the smile grow wider and wider on Dom’s face, the scale of what he has put together sinking in that little bit more. By the time a rousing rendition of ‘Loner’ sets the fireworks off, victory is assured in the most wonderful of ways. Built from the ground up, what YUNGBLUD has created here is nothing short of astonishing. A shining beacon of what believing in something with your whole heart and finding understanding and empathy with those around you can achieve. And with this as the benchmark, you get the feeling it will only get even bigger from here. See you next year, yeah? 🖋️ Jack Rogers 📷 Carla Mundy