The Falling In Reverse frontman has already taken shots at Yungblud this year. Now he is separating the artist from the industry machinery surrounding him.
Ronnie Radke is hardly the obvious person to come riding to Yungblud’s defence.
Earlier this year, the Falling In Reverse frontman took a public shot at him as a “silicon valley tech CEO funded punk rock liberator”, part of the wider authenticity argument that has followed Yungblud through his latest rise.
Which makes Radke’s latest take considerably more interesting.
During a recent interview with Rock Feed, the conversation turned to artists being positioned as the “future of rock”. Radke brought up Yungblud and rejected one of the biggest accusations attached to him.
“He’s actually not an industry plant,” Radke said.
He did not stop there.
Radke praised Yungblud as a “phenomenal singer”, particularly live, and spoke positively about him as a person. His criticism was aimed instead at the business and PR machinery around the artist. Radke speculated that some of the people surrounding Yungblud, and some of the corporate positioning attached to his career, have helped create the impression that the whole thing is more manufactured than he believes Yungblud himself actually is.
That is a much more interesting argument than simply deciding whether Yungblud is authentic or fake.
Radke is not pretending there is no machine.
He thinks there is one.
His point is that the machine and the artist inside it are not necessarily the same thing.
That becomes particularly relevant when you look at the “future of rock” label. Radke suggested that kind of framing can come from publicists, business people and the wider operation around an artist, rather than from the artist themselves. Yungblud has already made almost exactly that point from his side, saying in May that he does not like being called the future of rock and does not like people assuming he gave himself the title.
It is also where Radke’s comments cross into territory BLUNT has already spent a fair amount of time examining.
In June, The BLUNT Truth: Yungblud Isn’t An Industry Plant, The Internet Just Missed The Grind looked at the public record behind the accusation.
The conclusion was never that Yungblud built his career without industry help. He had labels, management, infrastructure and people who understood how to develop an artist.
The question was whether that support amounted to a secretly manufactured grassroots story.
BLUNT found no evidence that it did.
Instead, the record showed public releases dating back to 2017, years of touring and fan-building, Warped Tour appearances, chart growth and a visible career developing well before the Ozzy, Grammy and BLUDFEST moments pushed Yungblud into a much wider rock conversation.
Industry-backed was one thing.
Secretly manufactured was another.
A few days after that article was published, Yungblud quoted its headline in a pinned Instagram comment while talking about the industry-plant discourse and wrote: “This made me feel happy.” BLUNT reported on his response at the time.
Now Radke is arriving at a similar distinction from a very different direction.
That does not suddenly make him a Yungblud convert. His comments about the people and business structures around the artist are still pointed. If anything, his argument is that some of those choices have made Yungblud easier to distrust.
But he is separating that distrust from the person making the music.
There is one part of Radke’s interview that needs correcting.
While explaining why he does not consider Yungblud an industry plant, Radke said he toured with him on Warped Tour in 2012 and remembered there already being a buzz around him.
The year appears to be wrong.
Public touring records place Yungblud on Vans Warped Tour in 2018, where Falling In Reverse were also performing. Archived listings show the two acts appearing on overlapping dates that year.
So Radke appears to have misremembered the year rather than the broader encounter.
If he is recalling that 2018 run, the point he is making still fits the timeline: he remembers Yungblud with momentum years before the current level of mainstream rock attention.
And that is really the part of Radke’s argument worth holding onto.
There is obviously a sizeable industry around Yungblud now. There are labels, publicists, management, major commercial relationships and an operation capable of putting on increasingly enormous shows.
None of that needs to be ignored to make the case for his authenticity.
Radke’s position is almost the opposite.
The machine may have helped make Yungblud look manufactured.
He just doesn’t believe it manufactured Yungblud.
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