Get Inspired: Yoni Gottlieb Is Following His Dreams as Yugs

Yoni Gottlieb wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. At least that was his plan a decade ago, when he decided to follow in his family's footsteps and attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. But studying biology as a pre-med never excited Gottlieb as much as his lifelong propensity for music.

“I finished the major, but it was awful," he says. "It wasn’t for me."

That’s when he knew he needed to get back to making music. While growing up in Denver, he took piano and guitar lessons at the behest of his mother, a professional pianist. “I grew up with music around me always,” Gottlieb recalls. “I remember not wanting to go to lessons. I didn’t really jam with it at first.”

But eventually he did. In high school he began writing his own songs, and eventually released an EP, Cities and Countries, in 2015 under the moniker Yugs before enrolling at Penn. But Gottlieb nearly abandoned Yugs and music altogether during his university days. At the time, it seemed like the levelheaded thing to do, to focus on a lucrative profession that comes with a different type of title. “In college, I didn’t really make music or play music,” he admits. “It was one of those periods when it was a thing I almost let go of because I was being responsible, like, ‘I need to finish my degree.’”

As a hip-hop head, Gottlieb enjoyed Philly’s scene, which produced such rappers as Meek Mill and Lil Uzi Vert. He took some music classes and did jazz ensemble through school, figuring he could always dabble in it during his free time. “I didn’t really understand how many other opportunities there are out there when I was nineteen,” he says. “It was like, ‘I need to do the responsible thing, become a doctor, and I can always do music on the side.’ I wasn’t listening to my heart.”

Then something inside him shifted — maybe sitting through all those bio classes nearly bored him to death — but Gottlieb finally admitted to himself that he’d rather share music as Yugs than pursue his medical degree any further. “I always wanted to do it, but I never took myself seriously enough to do it — so it felt great coming out of college, finally finishing the bio degree and finally following my dreams,” he says now at 27.

He’s preparing to release his third Yugs album, Dancing in My Room, sometime in September, but takes a moment to give his younger, more “responsible” self some advice: “Just keep doing your thing. I would probably just try to remind my nineteen-year-old self that people are always going to have opinions about what you should do, but at the end of the day, you just have to listen to yourself and figure out what’s out there. There’s a much wider world out there,” he says, before pausing a moment.

“It’s something I shelved,” he continues. “Don’t shelf music when music is what you’re meant to do. It’ll keep you grounded. It’ll help you not be so alone. It’ll keep you around people. It'll keep you honest. Music is a saving grace.”

As a freelance music producer and publicist, Gottlieb has made music his full-time profession. He’s also returned to the stage as Yugs and released two records since 2019: his self-titled debut and Nostalgia Ascending (2021).

The next opportunity to see Yugs in Denver is on Friday, May 17, when he opens for Tonguebyte and Augustus at the 715 Club. Expect beach ball dodging and “moshing with consent,” he says.

“I like telling people to do it, because I think most people won’t do it unless you give them permission,” he adds. “I’m that guy in the crowd that’s like, ‘Do we want to mosh? Come on.’”
As a queer, Jewish, Chilean-American artist, Yugs allows Gottlieb to express himself in many ways, and it also quells the anxiety and depression he experiences with OCD. Music has ultimately become his “home base,” as he calls it. “Music has always been the get-out-of-it for me. If I’m really down or anxious about something, I can work on a song or go to a concert,” he explains. “It's the healthiest way I ever found to process those emotions. … There were times in my life where I didn’t write as much and I almost forgot to pick up a guitar or go to the keyboard. Those times I’m usually doing worse. It feels almost like a burden to work on music...but I end up finding my way back to it.”

Plus, he gets to play around with all his favorite genres. The two latest Yugs singles — “Tears on My Bed” and “Mona” — showcase elements of punk, indie rock, bossa nova and lo-fi hip-hop. That’s a broad spectrum, for sure, but Gottlieb somehow makes it work seamlessly. “I’m obsessed with combining genres,” he says. “I love so many types of music. I think my goal as a musician is to create a new form of music or create a new genre. It’s cool to bring different types of music into one song and find the humanity in between.”

The common denominator is lo-fi, he says: “I always throw lo-fi in. That’s my foundation of how I tie everything together. At the end of the day, I want it to feel like you can listen to it in your room or while you’re relaxing in your bed after a super long day. That’s lo-fi to me, that safe space. It’s more of a feeling, so there are elements of lo-fi in this.”

Yugs collaborated with the Denver indie trio Citizen Tempest for “Tears on My Bed,” while “Mona” is more bossa nova-meets-indie rock and was co-written with Brandon Unpingco, lead singer of local power-pop group the Mañanas (local acts Fruta Brutal and Fuya Fuya also provide backing vocals on the song).

“I’ve always loved the Strokes. I remember listening to Is This It on repeat when I was in high school. I wanted to bring that energy,” Gottlieb says of “Mona,” a ballad about having a crush on someone. “The first half I wanted to be chill — classic bossa nova. Then turned it into something with a little more energy and feeling and a little bit of desperation behind it. That’s why I brought the indie rock in for that switch-up in the second half of the song.”

Gottlieb explains that he simply aimed to write a love song whenever he and Unpingco met up at the former Park Hill Golf Course with their guitars. Coming out of a seven-year relationship, he set out to capture that feeling of falling for someone new. That's also one reason that Dancing in My Room is a breakup album.

“Your room is kind of like your soul or your headspace, and it’s like learning to dance with yourself and love yourself, which can be really hard,” he says of the title, adding that he initially felt “lost at sea and without an anchor” after the split.

“My ex-partner was my anchor for everything. I haven’t really been on my own since I was nineteen,” he continues. “A lot of the writing for this album came from that, like finally realizing what it’s like to be on your own for the first time in your adult life, and the loneliness of that and the freedom of that. It’s pretty sad, but there’s a lot of joy to be found in fully getting to know yourself and not having to rely on someone as an anchor.”

But some sound advice from his mother, Gabriela Kaufmann Gottlieb, has helped him navigate the unsettled sea and approach music in a broader sense.

“For me, music is about community. Any tool that can help to create and cultivate community, whether it’s social media or doing shows, that’s the most important thing. That’s the thing that keeps me grounded,” he says. “My mom always told me that anytime you perform, it’s a gift, and you should be grateful for that.”

Even when he may struggle with performance anxiety, he remembers those words. “It’s my gift," Gottlieb says, "so if I can make something special and maybe cultivate community around that, then I should do it in whatever form that looks like."

And he is, even if he’s better known as Yugs than Dr. Gottlieb now. He concludes: “I think nineteen-year-old me would be really happy to see 27-year-old me following those dreams."

Yugs, 8 p.m. Friday, May 17, 715 Club, 715 East 26th Avenue. Tickets are $10 at the door.