Justin Hawkins slates Yungblud’s Ozzy Osbourne tribute as ‘what a stripper would do’

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Justin Hawkins has compared Yungblud’s Ozzy Osbourne tribute to ‘what a male stripper would do’ in what has become a somewhat vocal week for The Darkness brothers.

The Darkness frontman, 50, has joined his brother Dan Hawkins in blasting the MTV Video Music Awards tribute to the late Black Sabbath icon over the weekend, which saw Yungblud share the stage with Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.

Speaking on his Justin Hawkins Rides Again podcast, he said: ‘It’s like you’ve watched a movie about rock and metal, it’s like what a male stripper would do.

‘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. That’s what makes it galling I think.’

The I Believe In A Thing Called Love rocker accused the 28-year-old musician of ‘positioning himself as a natural heir to the Ozzy legacy’ without having a connection to ‘the really important stuff’.

Yungblud and Steven Tyler performed a medley of Ozzy Osbourne songs for the VMAs tribute (Picture: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for MTV)

He argued: ‘I suppose one of the things that irks musicians of a certain age is to watch Ozzy invent heavy metal, then turn into this post MTV household name with the television series and his decades of being brilliant, and then you kind of think ‘What the f*** does all those decades of having this incredible legacy got to do with Yungblud?’ ”

Yungblud opened the tribute to Osbourne – who died on July 22 – by singing Crazy Train and Changes with Nuno on guitar, and they were then joined by the Aerosmith duo for Mama, I’m Coming Home.

After the performance, the quartet embraced and Yungblud shouted: ‘Ozzy forever man!’

Justin also drew unfavourable comparisons to 2003 Jack Black movie School of Rock.

He added: ‘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.

Joe Perry was also rocking out – but Justin Hawkins wasn’t convinced at the spectacle (Picture: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for MTV) He called Yungblud’s Changes rendition ‘painful’ (Picture: Gary Miller/Getty Images) Justin said this moment reminded him of a male stripper (Picture: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for MTV)

‘It’s 101 School of Rock stuff, you know? It’s the latest in a long line of – I’m sorry to say it – posers…’

The One Way Ticket hitmaker, who called Yungblud’s rendition of Changes ‘painful’, added: ‘For seven minutes, the world is looking at rock and this is what we’ve given them.’

He asked: ‘Where are the surviving members of Black Sabbath? Why aren’t they there?’

Justin, who admitted he was quite jealous of Yungblud getting to sing with Steven Tyler, recorded the video for his YouTube in an effort to explain his brother’s social media post slamming the performance.

‘It was born of a triggered state. Maybe I will be able to contextualise that,’ he said.