The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins responds to brother Dan calling Yungblud and Aerosmith “bellends” for Ozzy Osbourne tribute

The Darkness‘ Justin Hawkins has responded to his brother Dan calling Yungblud and Aerosmith “bellends” for their recent tribute to Ozzy Osbourne at the MTV VMAs earlier this week.

Yungblud (real name Dominic Harrison) teamed up with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt to honour the late Prince Of Darkness at this year’s ceremony, which took place in Long Island, New York on September 7.

Following the performance, The Darkness guitarist Dan Hawkins – younger brother of Justin – shared a brief clip of Yungblud and co’s VMAs 2025 tribute. The video included Ariana Grande’s astonished reaction to the performance.

Dan Hawkins was less than impressed, and shared some scathing criticism in the caption. “Another nail in the coffin of rock n roll,” he wrote. “Cynical, nauseating and more importantly; shit.”

Now, Justin has addressed Dan’s comments in a new video on YouTube: “We all watched [the VMAs performance] and we all found it a little bit triggering in different ways. I think Dan was so triggered, that he instructed his social media manager to post something along the lines of ‘What a bunch of bellends’, which is poking just a little bit of good-natured fun at the people involved, but it was borne of the triggered state, I think.”

Before getting to the actual performance, Hawkins addressed Yungblud’s attire, which comprised of a necklace he was gifted by Ozzy himself, as well as a pair of leather pants once worn by Iggy Pop. On the red carpet, a shirtless Yungblud posed “like Jim Morrison“, stretching his arms out like Jesus Christ.

“I know what he’s doing, I think he’s doing Ozzy. The tribute to Ozzy extends to what he was doing on the red carpet. So the minute he got there, he was like ‘OK, this is for Ozzy.’ One difference though, Ozzy was fucking hilarious, he really was funny.”

Addressing the performance, Justin Hawkins praised Nuno Bettencourt but criticised Yungblud’s showing: “I suppose one of the things that irks musicians of a certain age is to watch Ozzy invent heavy metal, then turn into this household name with the television series and his decades of being brilliant, and then you kind of think ‘What the fuck does all those decades of having this incredible legacy got to do with Yungblud?'”

“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.” The video then transitions to clips of Yungblud performing on a Disney show, with his crew mocking the musician for being “heavily influenced” by Ozzy.

“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? It’s the latest in a long line of – I’m sorry to say it – poseurs… For seven minutes, the world is looking at rock and this is what we’ve given them.”

“It’s like you’ve watched a movie about rock and metal, it’s like what a male stripper would do,” Hawkins said of Yungblud’s headbanging onstage. “It doesn’t ring authentic… It’s rock n’ roll, but not as we know it. It kind of has this Disney veneer over the top of it, like it’s rock n’ roll seen through an Instagram filter of some sort.”

Concluding on the matter, Justin Hawkins said: “I hope some of what I’ve said today can shed light on what musicians of a certain age find irksome about a performance like that. I think it’s just about integrity, authenticity and seeing that something that has been outsider’s music since Ozzy invented it to be sort of front and centre like that and be whitewashed like that in that slightly galling television way. It’s hard to watch when you’ve spent your life playing this stuff. I’ll leave you with this final thought: the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world that Ozzy gave a shit about him.”

Ahead of the appearance, Yungblud said: “I’ll try my best to do you proud Oz. Tune in from up there. I love you forever.” Shortly after Osbourne’s passing on July 22, Yungblud vowed to play his ‘Changes’ cover “every night for the rest of my life”. More recently, he looked back on the best advice the late icon ever gave him.

Speaking to NME last month, Yungblud said: “Ozzy was always my north star. Ozzy Osborne and David Bowie meant everything to me. Ozzy was a character in my life who was a reflection of everything I went through.

“I was always a bit over the top. I was always seen to be a bit crazy. I was always seen to be a bit loud, but when some people saw that as a negative, Ozzy would provide me with the hope that there was an avenue for someone like me in the world.”

He went on to say that Osbourne’s death was “still raw”, adding: “It’s been a very weird couple of weeks. But losing someone I admired and got to know really made me think about the idea of legacy and connection with people. All that matters is the connection with them.”

When backstage at the ‘Back To The Beginning’ event in Birmingham, Yungblud gifted Osbourne a custom-made gold cross.

The post The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins responds to brother Dan calling Yungblud and Aerosmith “bellends” for Ozzy Osbourne tribute appeared first on NME.