Justin Hawkins Lashes Out At Yungblud Again: “If This Is Ozzy’s Heir, We’re In Trouble”

Yungblud copped another serve from The Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins, who sledged the rocker in a new interview

Justin Hawkins still has a bee in his bonnet about Yungblud. The lead singer of The Darkness, still best known for their 2003 hit, “I Believe In A Thing Called Love”, is not happy that some quarters are dubbing the Doncaster-born Yungblud, born Dom Harrison, the de facto heir to the late Ozzy Osbourne.

This comes on the heels of Hawkins’ brother and fellow Darkness-er, Dan, labelling Yungblud’s VMA tribute to Ozzy “nauseating” back in September. Justin later spoke about Dan’s criticisms, saying “I feel like what irks musicians of a certain age is the fact that Yungblud seems to have positioned himself as a natural heir to the Ozzy legacy, having nothing to do with the really important stuff. All of this posturing is Jim Morrison meets the bloke from Stone Temple Pilots meets everybody else who’s ever owned a pair of leather trousers. It’s 101 School of Rock stuff, you know?” Which, if you remember The Darkness’ first flush of success, is very funny.

Now, Hawkins J has taken aim at Yungblud’s past as a Disney star, Harrison having starred in The Lodge from 2016 to 2017. “If the future of rock comes from musical theatre and Disney, if this is Ozzy’s heir, we’re in trouble,” he said in a new interview with Classic Rock.

On a totally unrelated subject, Hawkins wrote advertising jingles for a living prior to The Darkness hitting it big.

For his part, Yungblud has been widely praised for him performance at the Video Music Awards honouring Ozzy, where he was joined by Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt. In a new interview with Billboard this week, he took a sly riposte at the Hawkinses, saying, “The criticism at the VMAs was coming from people that were trying to be doormen at a party that they weren’t invited to. That’s the harsh reality of it.”