YUNGBLUD has released the live “Zombie” he sang with Billy Corgan at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre, the night the Smashing Pumpkins frontman walked on two songs into a nine-song set and split the verses with him. The 4:32 recording comes out as a two-track single, paired with a studio “Zombie” credited to the same duo, and it turns a one-night club moment into an official release.

On stage the two traded verses and harmonized on the chorus, with Corgan on guitar in a band that had already run through “Hello Heaven, Hello” and “The Funeral”. The Riviera show was a club-size stop on the Idols World Tour, booked in Corgan’s home city the night before both acts played Lollapalooza in Grant Park. Later in the same set, YUNGBLUD played “Changes”, the Black Sabbath ballad that has followed him since the Ozzy Osbourne tribute.

The pairing is not a one-night stunt. Corgan co-produced a heavier version of “Zombie” with Matt Schwartz and brought the Smashing Pumpkins onto it, which press materials described as the first time the band had featured on another artist’s recording. YUNGBLUD has said he was channelling “Siamese Dream” when he wrote the song, and Corgan picked up on that: “Yungblud’s star shines bright, so it’s been great fun to lend our zig-zag voice to his ‘Zombie’ which he’s said was inspired by one of our own.” Charlie Sarsfield directed the video for that version in a snow-covered graveyard.

They met backstage at Back to the Beginning, Black Sabbath’s farewell concert in Birmingham, where both took part in the tributes to Ozzy Osbourne. YUNGBLUD followed up on his own. “I sent Billy an email, asking if he would re-imagine this song with me,” he said when the studio version came out. “To watch one of my idols work on something that I had written was one of the greatest honours of my life.”

He has called “Zombie” “the most important song of IDOLS to me”, and the numbers back the claim: the announcement of the Pumpkins version described it as the fastest-streaming solo single of his career, past 100 million streams. It also earned him a nomination for Best Rock Song at the 68th Grammy Awards, a category won by Nine Inch Nails with “As Alive As You Need Me To Be”. The same night, his live “Changes” from Villa Park, recorded with Nuno Bettencourt, Frank Bello, Adam Wakeman and II, took Best Rock Performance, while “Idols” lost Best Rock Album to Turnstile’s “Never Enough”.

The Riviera performance took place on Thursday, July 30, 2026, a day before YUNGBLUD and the Smashing Pumpkins played their Lollapalooza sets. The Smashing Pumpkins version of “Zombie” had arrived at the start of January 2026. Corgan’s backing goes back further: in a 2023 interview he said of YUNGBLUD, “I can tell where he’s going, and if I’m right, we’ll be talking about him for the next 50 years.”

“Zombie (Live from the Riviera Theatre)” came out on October 8, 2026 through Capitol Records and Locomotion Recordings, with the performance video on the YUNGBLUDVEVO channel.

Tags: rock, Billy Corgan, Lollapalooza, The Smashing Pumpkins, Idols World Tour, YUNGBLUD

YUNGBLUD releases the ‘Zombie’ he sang with Billy Corgan in Chicago as a live single

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