YUNGBLUD has partnered with Vevo for an exclusive behind the scenes look at his video for “acting like that” (feat. Machine Gun Kelly & Travis Barker) in the latest installment of Vevo Footnotes.
YUNGBLUD reveals that the video was conceptualized in part as a way to film all three musicians while on two different continents — YUNGBLUD’s scenes were shot in Greenwich, London, while Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker shot their scenes together in Downtown Los Angeles. The video depicts a zombie apocalypse as a nod to the current global pandemic the world has faced for the past year. FOOTNOTES OUTLINE:(00:8) Narration: “acting like that” is the sixth single from YUNGBLUD’s album, Weird! (00:13) YUNGBLUD, Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker have collaborated previously on “I Think I’m Okay” from MGK’s 2019 album, Hotel Diablo. (00:28) YUNGBLUD: “It’s a funny story. I remember Kells called me. He literally got my number from someone and was like ‘Yo, I have a song idea, do you wanna come round to my house?’ I went to his house and I literally didn’t knock on the door, I just walked into the living room and was like ‘Have you seen the machine gun?’ I think we wrote “I Think I’m Okay” that night.” (00:42) Narration: YUNGBLUD and his manager Gavin directed the video.
(00:48) They met when Gavin was an intern at Interscope Records at the time YUNGBLUD was signed to the label. (01:03) YUNGBLUD: “Gavin is my best mate. No one sees my vision like Gavin and Tom, my photographer.” (01:22) Narration: Initially they had planned on filming something “slick and sexy,” but eventually they had to improvise. (01:31) YUNGBLUD: “Me, Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker are on other sides of the world in the middle of a global pandemic so how the hell do we do a video that incorporates the three of us, yet gives us an excuse to be apart? I was like, ‘a zombie apocalypse – that’s literally it.’ It’s infecting the UK and it’s infecting America. It’s kind of a weird parody of coronavirus. An infection we’re all fighting against right now.”
(01:51) Narration: Travis Barker and Machine Gun Kelly’s scenes were shot in Downtown LA while YUNGBLUD shot his scenes in Greenwich, London. (01:55) Shaun of the Dead was a key visual reference. (01:58) YUNGBLUD met Travis Barker two years ago, while shooting “11 Minutes” with Halsey. (02:12) YUNGBLUD: “We wanted live drums and I was like, ‘What the fuck?! You’ve been on my bedroom wall since I was a kid!’” (02:34) Narration: YUNGBLUD recorded “acting like that” while in the studio with Travis and MGK.
(02:44) YUNGBLUD: “This song is legitimately what happens when we get in a room together. We’d lost a kid from the scene, we were kind of upset about it, thinking it could have been one of us. So we said, ‘Do you wanna go out and get drunk?’ We had the craziest night ever and we wrote it after that night. We were like ‘We need to document the night itself,’ and this is it.” (03:08) YUNGBLUD: “I think sonically it’s old school pop punk in a new way with 808s. The scene that’s going on right now, which Travis is very much a part of, is insane. It’s incredible pop punk coming back to the mainstream.”
