Sean Sharp's Diary

This album has me torn. While it seems that the general consensus on YUNGBLUD is improving with each album he releases, I am struggling to find that same mentality. At the time when his debut dropped, I thought it was pretty solid. Now that I've aged a bit, I do find it pretty juvenile and several things I used to like I no longer do with it's concept or execution, yet I can still appreciate it for how I used to like it. Then came "weird!" which I absolutely love even to this day. While a lot of the same scatterbrained production and vocals are there like his first, I found it to be an improved upon version of his debut and it really scratched an itch for me. Since then, his self-titled effort left me with not much to say. I found it to be his most boring project. Finally, we have arrived at "Idols" which shows some serious appraisal to his inspiration. This album in particular really focuses on the legends of rock and integrates parts of what built not just brit-rock but rock as a whole. "Hello Heaven, Hello" and "Ghosts" are presented in these longform, evolving rock ballads that are a testament to what traditional "good" classic rock is. I personally struggle with these even though I love certain parts of them, even more so than all the other songs besides the few I will mention later. I want to listen to these songs and I think they work well on the album so the project definitely gets some positive reputation on my end for this but just how I listen to music on a day to day basis means I will never listen to them. Only within the setting of the whole album, but when an album doesn't reach a certain level of quality, I don't want to listen to the whole thing, so I just never end up listening to songs like those again. Bit of a conundrum. A hefty amount of the tracks on here are pretty standard rock just with YUNGBLUD's distinctive voice. I find these all quite boring. Nothing too good, nothing too bad. The two tracks that I found to stand out a bit more were "Monday Murder" and "War" and both share a similar thing. They delve deeper into that symphonic element that is used at times. I think YUNGBLUD's voice pairs well with it, which is odd considering how unpolished some of his vocals are next to these instrumentals. I get this was an ohmage to a larger scaled version of rock than just that style, but it's got me feigning for more.