Rod Stewart Knows Yungblud Used to Think He Was His Grandfather

One of Yungblud’s^[1] most formative musical memories was the white lie his grandma told him that his estranged grandfather was none other than Rod Stewart^[2]. He’s shared this tall tale in a variety of interviews over the years — including a 2019 Rolling Stone profile^[3] — but in his most recent telling, Yungblud^[4] revealed that Stewart himself is aware of the story.

During an interview^[5] on The Capital Evening Show with Jimmy Hill, Yungblud once again recounted how his maternal grandmother — who raised Yunglud’s mom as a single mother — brought him up believing that Stewart was his grandpa. The illusion finally broke when Yungblud was about nine years old, when he was at a store with his grandmother and picked up a Stewart CD by the checkout counter. 

He recalled: “It was like proper quivering lip, like, ‘Nan, when’s granddad coming home?’ And everyone at the checkout started laughing at us, knowing that they caught my grandmother in a blatant lie. And that was the day I found out Rod Stewart was not in fact my grandfather.”

After joking that he hadn’t bothered to do a DNA test just in case, Yungblud did reveal that Stewart once sent him a message on Instagram that read simply, “All right, me wee grandson.”

Laughing, Yungblud said, “I was like, ‘Rod Stewart, man, he’s got the banter!’”

Yungblud is currently touring Europe in support of his most recent album, Idols^[6], which was released in June. He has a handful of North American shows scheduled for late November, but a more lengthy run^[7] is on the docket for next year. It’s set to kick off May 1, 2026, in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and wrap on June 13 in Atlanta.