Yungblud returned to Lollapalooza in Chicago on Friday, where he rocked the crowd with songs from his breakthrough album, 2025’s Idols.
It marked his second time at the festival, having played in 2018, and came after a rocky start to the month. On July 9, the musician pulled out of Cowboys Music Festival after sharing a vulnerable post earlier that week in which he addressed being called an “industry plant.” Fellow artists, celebs and fans responded with their support of the musician, including SZA, Lauren Jauregui, Alyssa Milano, and more.
Onstage at Lolla, he appeared to put that all behind him, delivering a full throttle and very sweaty set. In an epic moment during the fest, the star brought up a fan from the swell of the crowd, Katie from Michigan, and handed her his guitar and pick. The duo launched into fan-favorite song “Fleabag” with Katie helming the ax, delivering a high-voltage performance that ended with Yungblud jumping off the stage to high fave and embrace more fans. The singer closed with Idols ballad “Zombie.”
The singer born Dominic Harrison drew a massive crowd to his set on the Bud Light stage. And among his fans are fellow musicians. He performed with Black Sabbath for what turned out to be Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert and performed a tribute to him at the MTV VMA Awards last September. He then teamed up with Aerosmith for a collaborative EP last November, and he released a new version of “Zombie” featuring the Smashing Pumpkins earlier this year. While he played a couple hours before the Pumpkins took the same stage as headliners on Friday, they did not join him for the song. Instead, Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan joined Yungblud last night during his Lollapalooza after show at the Riviera.
Touring on his fourth and latest album, he highlighted songs from it, beginning with opener “Hello Heaven, Hello.” He paid tribute to Ozzy and Black Sabbath with “Changes” and also nodded to his Aerosmith collab with a performance of “My Only Angel.” It was a raucous return to form, which his fervent fans welcomed, in light of his previous nixed shows.
In an interview with Rolling Stone’s Music Now in January, he addressed that he had previously canceled some shows to consciously take better care of himself. “I always get myself checked after every tour I do, especially after this year. I have a tendency to run and run until the wheels fall off,” he said. “I think that’s how I’m built. It was the first time that I had medical advice. They were like, you got 18 months touring coming up. We think you should knock a couple gigs on the head at the end of this year. And I’m pretty grateful for that, to be honest, because it’s been such a mental year to be able to have the time to actually comprehend it and process it in my head. I go back out on tour in January and it runs till mid-’27 now. So I think it’s important to take that time and really process what’s going on and be grateful for it.”
