Young Blood

This article is about the single, Young Blood. You may be looking for the EP of the same name. For that article, click here.

Young Blood is the first track off of both Not An Apology and the EP of the same name. On both the album and EP, it is succeeded by Fire N Gold. It was written by Bea Miller, Mike Del Rio, Matt Parad, and Phoebe Ryan. It was produced by Del Rio. The song duration is 3:39 minutes.

Background
After placing ninth on the second season of The X Factor USA, Bea Miller signed a record deal with Hollywood Records and Simon Cowell's Syco Music in January 2013, and subsequently started working on new songs.

Bea described this song as having "darkness and light within it, which I think is really cool and representative of kids. We’re the future, and we can do whatever we want because someday this world will be ours. Literally, it will be because we will be the adults who are in charge some day." She came up with that philosophy from "a long time I was kind of a glass-half-empty type of person. I went through a hard time. I started to compare myself to my friends, what they were doing compared to what I was doing. I realized eventually that it’s not healthy to think so negatively, that there is a positive side.

Life is not going from bad to good, but it’s a balance of the two that kind of goes up and down. There are bad things and there are good things. I thought it would be good to bring that into music because I realized that I’m not the only one who feels that way, that a lot of teenagers especially feel that way. Like the weight of the world is on their shoulders, and I wanted to be able to express that so that teenagers could relate to it and realize they’re not alone."

In 2015, the song received a Radio Disney Music Award for "Best Song to Rock Out to With your BFFs".

Promotion
Miller performed the song for the first time on television on December 17, 2014, on the Today Show where she was introduced as Elvis Duran's "Artist of the Month." She sang "Young Blood" in various gigs and radio stations across the U.S., such as On Air with Ryan Seacrest and The Kidd Kraddick Morning Show. Miller performed the song on the Demi World Tour in which she served as the opening act in select tour dates. The song was used in an episode of American Idol.

Music video
The music video for "Young Blood" was uploaded to Miller's official VEVO account on July 21, 2014. It was directed by Mark Pellington. She described it as "very dark, but, like I said with the actual song, it’s kind of a balance of light and dark. It’s weird. There’s a lot of jump cuts and quick movements but there are also slow moments. It has kids laughing and then kids screaming and crying… it’s kind of a balance all of these emotions." Speaking to MTV News about the video, she said "I wanted the video for Young Blood to be really dark. I wanted the whole thing to revolve around nighttime, I didn't want any daylight. Originally, the director wanted at the end of the video to be a sunrise, but I was like 'no, that's corny,' that just means dark turns to light. And dark doesn't necessarily always turns to light. It can be dark for a long time, and then will be light, then will be dark again. I'm not just gonna have that message that everyone has of like 'I know you're down in the dumps, but you'll get up and stay up. Don't you worry.' Because it's not true, you can be up and down."

Lyrics
We were making history

Breaking rules and breaking free

Questioning the writing on the wall

Coming from the underground

Laughing as we're falling down

Soaking in the glory of it all

But in dark times when we close our eyes

It’s a nightmare, it’s a nightmare

When the sun don’t shine we lose our minds

But I swear, we can get there

We’ve got young blood

Can’t destroy us

We make our own luck in this world

We’ve got young blood

No one chose us

We make our own love in this world

Someday we could run away

See it all before the pictures fade

And bottle up the feeling in a jar

Pass around to all our friends

We can breathe it in and out again

Huddled in the backseat of the car

But in dark times when we close our eyes

It’s a nightmare, it’s a nightmare

When the sun don’t shine we lose our minds

But I swear, we can get there

We’ve got young blood

Can’t destroy us

We make our own luck in this world

We’ve got young blood

No one chose us

We make our own love in this world

And the voices will get loud

If you never learn to shut them out

If you’re lost you can be found

If you follow me until you hear the sound

Put ‘em up, put ‘em up now

If you know we’re never backing down

We’re never backing down, no

We’ve got young blood

Can’t destroy us

We make our own luck in this world

We’ve got young blood

No one chose us

We make our own love in this world

We’ve got young blood

Can’t destroy us

We make our own luck in this world

We’ve got young blood

No one chose us

We make our own love in this world

Yeah, cause we’ve got young blood