Greatest Parade

Album: Idols (2025)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Yungblud grew his fanbase pretty quickly, rising fast with his 2018 debut album, 21st Century Liability, and its follow-up, Weird! in 2020. But fans can be fickle, and he got some negative feedback for his self-titled third album in 2022. When he set out to make his fourth album, Idols, he was thinking about idolatry and the ebbs and flows of fame.

    "I really wrote this as a love letter to my fanbase," said of the song in Rolling Stone. "And people who have left been like, you were once a part of the greatest parade, and you can go, you can come, but I will think of you. I will dream of you, I will do this for you every day until I am not here anymore. It was a really gutting song. It's about how we lift something up onto a pedestal and rip it down and then lift it up and rip down again because it's entertainment."
  • Those high notes at the end were a stretch for Yungblud. He says getting singing lessons helped him to hit them.
  • Yungblud wanted the Idols album to sound big. And important. He did so, in part, by bringing in the string section from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which plays on this track. "Music at the minute is so much about dopamine and less about depth," he told Gibson. "Everyone is putting a time limit on their ideas by making it so specific. We really wanted to make something larger than life and ambitious, and big."
  • Yungblud writes most of his own songs, typically with his main producer, Matt Schwartz. He wrote Greatest Parade with Schwartz, his guitarist Adam Warrington, and bass player Bob Bradley.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie Combination

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie CombinationSong Writing

In 1986, a Stephen King novella was made into a movie, with a classic song serving as title, soundtrack and tone.

Modern A Cappella with Peder Karlsson of The Real Group

Modern A Cappella with Peder Karlsson of The Real GroupSong Writing

The leader of the Modern A Cappella movement talks about the genre.

Jeff Trott

Jeff TrottSongwriter Interviews

Sheryl Crow's longtime songwriting partner/guitarist Jeff Trott reveals the stories behind many of the singer's hits, and what its like to be a producer for Leighton Meester and Max Gomez.

Michael Schenker

Michael SchenkerSongwriter Interviews

The Scorpions and UFO guitarist is also a very prolific songwriter - he explains how he writes with his various groups, and why he was so keen to get out of Germany and into England.

Loudon Wainwright III

Loudon Wainwright IIISongwriter Interviews

"Dead Skunk" became a stinker for Loudon when he felt pressure to make another hit - his latest songs deal with mortality, his son Rufus, and picking up poop.

Little Big Town

Little Big TownSongwriter Interviews

"When seeds that you sow grow by the wicked moon/Be sure your sins will find you out/Your past will hunt you down and turn to tell on you."