Yungblud poses ahead of the MTV EMA’s 2020. (Ian Gavan/Getty Images for MTV)
Pop-punk singer Yungblud has opened up being pansexual, saying he hopes it encourages others who are struggling to label their sexuality.
The 11 Minutes singer came out as pansexual and polyamorous in December 2020, having previously described his sexuality as “very fluid” but “more straight”.
Speaking in a new interview with Hunger magazine, the 24-year-old star reflected on his coming out and explained why it felt important for him to “own these labels”.
“I was just like with it all; ‘I’m pan, you know what I’m saying?’ It doesn’t matter what genitalia you’ve got or what you identify as, if I love you, I love you and that’s it, and that’s (something) I’ve struggled with my whole life, because I didn’t know what I was,” he said.
“I couldn’t quite put a label on it, then I learned about pansexuality from magazines and the internet and I think it’s so beautiful that sexuality has really come to the forefront of my generation’s mind, that you can be beautifully yourself.
“What I want to encourage with my message is that no matter what you are, no matter how you want to express yourself, you are individual and you are beautiful just by simply existing. I wanted to make a stand so that if anyone’s out there scared to come out, they will come out.”
Yungblud’s northern upbringing was a ‘catalyst’
Yungblud also touched on upbringing in Doncaster, telling Hunger that the industrial town was a “beautiful” place to grow up but also quite hard emotionally.
This experience was “the catalyst for everything” in his creative approach today, he explained.
“I was always quite creative and had ideas about my sexuality and my gender that didn’t conform to the ideologies that Doncaster would put in front of me. I wanted to be who I was and I was told that I had to be a certain thing or be nothing at all, and I didn’t like that,” he said.
Yungblud is back with a new single, Fleabag, a song he hopes will subvert listeners’ expectations. He’ll also be travelling across the UK as part of his Life on Mars tour, starting at Reading Festival next week.