Artist:
Julience
Composer: Vincent Julien Le Blanc
Lyricist: Vincent Julien Le Blanc
Release Date:
June 01, 2026

---

Black Sheep

Reach-me-down genes passed down the family
Like second hand rag dolls and Playmobil
A wicked curse of genealogy
I never could quite fit in society

Because I’m the black sheep
Woah I’m the black sheep
Because I’m the black sheep
The black sheep of the family
(Let me tell you about it)
(Oh yeah)

I had a penchant for nonconformity
My teachers all told me I was such a pain
I never strayed far from depravity
32 years of bad luck and shame

Because I’m the black sheep
Woah I’m the black sheep
Because I’m the black sheep
The black sheep of the family

That’s right I’m the black sheep
Woah I’m the black sheep
That’s right I’m the black sheep
My name is whispered in a hush

Because I’m the black sheep
Woah I’m the black sheep
Because I’m the black sheep
The black sheep of the family

That’s right I’m the black sheep
Woah I’m the black sheep
Oh God I’m the black sheep
The black sheep of the family

(One, two, three, four!)

---

---

Reviews & Feedback

that song is an earworm – the chorus has been playing in my head since i heard it!
@unclefunkbeard

This is brilliant another incredible track from you! You’re always guaranteed plays off me anyway so that’s a given 😁
Laura Beth

Black Sheep is a great and inspiring rocker. I caught it on the Indie Music Showcase yesterday and I really dig your guitar playing on it. I hope others will give it a listen. I’m sure they’ll like it as much as I did
Black Creek Rock

Just heard the new song of Julience. What can I say? Amazing, dude! Great song, great sound! Don’t miss it, dears!
Quim

My #IWantMyNAS Friday video pick of the week is “Black Sheep” by
@JulienceUK From fellow NAS #rocker, a #MusicVideo for anyone who doesn’t fit in with family, society or both.
#BlackSheep #IndieRock #AlternativeRock #AltRock #IndieMusic
Crystal Crown Productions_Annimax

My Friday #NAS #Videooftheweek is “Black Sheep” by @JulienceUK
. Had the chance to see it premiere’d on Uncle Funkbeard’s show and it blew me away!
David Von Beahm

My #IWantMyNAS video pick is “Black Sheep” by @JulienceUK
: a super groovy song with gorgeous lyrics and a great video — we’re all black sheep, aren’t we?!
And…more cowbell!!😁
Portobello Express

The Spotify algorithm just flipped you up on my release radar! It’s a bloody good track.
Roger A Brown

Indie Pulse Live Show
2nd-June-2026

---

Black Sheep, by Julience
Written by Jake Sommer

The history of the term black sheep runs surprisingly deep, rooted in a mix of biology, economics, and human psychology. In 16th and 17th-century European agriculture, a black lamb was a financial headache for shepherds. Born from a rare recessive gene, its dark wool couldn’t be dyed, making it commercially worthless compared to the white flock.

By the 1600s, Puritans turned this economic nuisance into a harsh religious metaphor for sinners and outcasts who disrupted the congregation. Today, social psychologists even study the “Black Sheep Effect”—the phenomenon where a tight-knit group judges a non-conforming insider far more harshly than an outsider because that non-conformity threatens the collective identity.

It is a heavy history that fits the hard-hitting rock observations of Julience’s new track perfectly–Black Sheep.

Black Sheep starts out with a “start me up” Stones-style vibe against a Blue Oyster Cult-like back-end percussion (He even throws some Mick Jagger-like “Uh’s” throughout, which is just awesome). Typical of Julience, the lyrics are raw, reflective, forward, and above all authentic.

The song quickly gets to the line, “I never strayed far from depravity.” There is a deep universality here that a lot of people are going to relate to, especially when he hits the lyric, “I never could quite fit into society.” In this way, I suspect Julience isn’t just speaking about his specific family of origin but the broader human family as a whole.

Maybe we’ve all felt that isolation and group rejection at some point. He drives that point home with the line, “my teachers all told me I was such a pain,” tapping right into that universal childhood feeling of being misunderstood by the very institutions meant to shape us into matching the white flock. But not all loneliness and not all isolation are the same, and anchoring back to Julien’s use of depravity, it seems he is channelling the rarer use of the term–debasement.

It brings to mind George Bernard Shaw’s famous play Pygmalion, where Alfred Doolittle completely exposes the hypocrisy of social expectations, famously shooting back when questioned about his morals: “Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.”

Musically, I love when Julience lets the guitar tone out starting around 2:11, and brings on the background synth at 2:28, all with the percussive swell around 2:40… it just works so well. Julience is good at making points in his songs, then letting you sit with them, while he cranks out chords for you to digest, and it is a great feature of this song.

This world has a lot of political and social correctness, and maybe what I love best about Julience is that he is just who he is. Maybe that is why he is a black sheep. Julience does not compromise. He just emits what he thinks, feels, and plays, and we are the much wiser and better for it. In that way, there is an argument to be made that all the conforming sheep are really the abnormality.

#BlackSheep #Julience #RockReview #StonesVibe #BlueOysterCultPercussion #GuitarSwell #SynthRock #AuthenticLyrics #HumanCondition #OutcastAnthem #BlackSheepEffect #Pygmalion #GeorgeBernardShaw #NoCompromise #JakeSommer #journeyrock #flow #musicformidnight #pennywisdom #solitarysunrise #theprisonyears

---

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿 – this week: Black Sheep – Julience
Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝘽𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙎𝙝𝙚𝙚𝙥 – 𝙅𝙪𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚

Charles is knitting with wool…

“If the shoe fits, wear it” – so the saying goes. If the shoe doesn’t fit, wear something else. Makes sense. But most tend to opt for an uncomfortable in-between… If the shoe doesn’t fit, wear it anyway. These are my thoughts of the day. Confused? I know EYE am. In fact, I’ve always been a little confused. Mainly because things tend to make sense to me in a different way. Or they don’t make sense to me in the slightest. Still confused? Yeah, I can see your furrowed brow from here. I am talking about the way EYE am versus the way most others are. And this applies to you too. Do you find that you look at the world a little differently to others? Of course you do. You’re an artist. We tend to be a little different in many ways. But it ain’t just art and artists; it all stems back to school…

Were you the one with long hair when everyone else had short hair? Or vice versa? Were you the one who’d rather stay at home and play guitar than go out and play sports? Were you always listening to different music to your peers’? Ringing a bell yet…? How about at home? Family usually has that family connection, no? Where each member tends to have similar views, thoughts, feelings…? But not you. You always had your own way of seeing the world. And because of all this, you were treated differently at home, in school and in later life? The odd one out? The weirdo? The wretched outcast? The black sheep…?

“Fitting in” is something we naturally do (or attempt to do) as a teenager. You weren’t the only one. Everyone you knew was trying desperately to “go with the crowd”. Of course, there were the leaders and the followers. The leaders were often just as inauthentic as the followers; those leaders were usually just attention-seekers. Those followers were just trying to be part of something. The thing is, there are many of us who tried fitting in, failed to fit in, and instead just did our own thing. That’s where most of us come in. My question is, whether it is weird to be different? Surely it’s NATURAL to be different, no? We’re not clones… Just because most of your friends left school and got office jobs, doesn’t mean that YOU should have to do that. Rather than “them” being the “normal” ones and “us” being the “weirdos”, I like to think of it differently. How’s about this (to make you feel a bit better about yourself)… YOU were honest with yourself. YOU’RE one of the few who DIDN’T bow to peer pressure and “the system”. Those who chose to continue wearing the ill-fitting shoe, will potentially regret their decision as they hobble through life. But you? You’re a lone wolf in sheep’s clothing! EMBRACE the black sheep in you! Welsh need not apply.

THIS black sheep seems to have wandered aimlessly into a field of music. Mehh (says the sheep). Okay, it seems this sheep is not impressed. But one artist seems to stand out… A chap who although born Dutch, is based in Manchester, England. Please welcome your new favourite black sheep, Julience. And yes, his latest release is called ‘Black Sheep’, but I think you’d gathered that by now. This man has appeared 3 times in my “maybe list”, but has never quite managed to arrive on this page of mine. So, as I stick a gold star on Julience’s lapel, I smile.

I’m going to morph into Billy Shears and reveal what’s underneath this ‘Black Sheep’. My previous two reviews have covered unusual songs with complicated structures. THIS, is the complete polar opposite. It is proof that great songs don’t always have to be complex. In fact, most of the songs you find yourself humming day-in, day-out, will probably be pretty simple songs. ‘Black Sheep’ shows off such a forté. If you’re gonna use just two chords, THIS is the way to do it. It is time to rock in a classic way. That’s right, we’re stepping back to somewhere between 1970 and 1976. We start immediately with a riff that conjures the spirit of Messrs. Jagger and Richards. Specifically ‘Start Me Up’. That’s in the left ear. But just one round in, we’re introduced to the rest of the band with a second guitar on the right – one that sounds as though Mark Knopfler has borrowed Richards’ other guitar. Bass right down the middle, and drums that sound straight outta ‘All Right Now’ by Free. Yes, complete with unmistakable COWBELL!!! But PLEASE don’t make the mandatory (they’re not mandatory) cowbell jokes in the comments. The cowbell is feeling a little put upon. But now we come to the voice. Imagine the attitude of Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott and Bruce Springsteen with the vocal tone of… ah damn, I can’t quite get it. Can you? Maybe in the comments? Is it Roger Daltrey with a large sprinkling of Peter Gabriel? You tell me. My final comparison is probably not one that anyone else would come up with… Daft Punk, anyone? No, I’m not joking. There’s a song called ‘Fragments of Time’ by Daft Punk & Todd Edwards that for some reason feels somewhat similar to me. The sound is entirely different. So is the genre. So is the entire song. And yet there is something there. Almost certainly complete coincidence, but I like to make these little comparisons – it’s just the way my brain works. I hear you already: “Coincidence?? You’re completely insane! They’re nothing LIKE each other, you twat!”

But… Two chords… How does this work? How can just two chords make a song great? I’ll tell ya. When we sing songs, we don’t sing chords. We CAN’T sing chords. Instead, we sing melodies. Melodies with words. Which is two thirds of what makes up “the song”. Other than the chords, the rest is performance and production. Rock is in Julience’s veins. Which isn’t about virtuosic ability, but a feel. Jagger did not have an incredible voice, he made a thrilling sound. Richards was never one of the greatest guitarists of all time; he made a thrilling sound. It’s more about attitude and rock ethic than anything else. You have to feel it to believe it. I felt it in Julience’s recordings, so I definitely believe it. The playing and the singing is everything, here. The performance. When it comes to rock, the performance is everything. Anyone can play Beatles songs, and “the song” always shines (admittedly never as brightly as the original). But with rock, when a mediocre rock combo starts to play a Stones tune, the actual song usually falls flat on its face. Because it’s simply not the Stones. The performance is why I adore Queens of the Stone Age. No one could take the place of Josh Homme, just like no one could take the place of Julience. His passionate singing voice, his edgy guitar tone, his masterful basslines, his sneaky OWgan parts, his fabulous drum fills, and yes, his cowbell; these are all of the things that make up ‘Black Sheep’. The fact that it’s just two chords becomes largely irrelevant. It’s a rocking little record (how many of you sang the next line?)… And speaking of lines, those lyrics are so integral to this being such a corker of a song – most of us relate. We’re all alone, together. Not as the song suggests, but as colossal woolly mammoths!

I did it!! I actually wrote a short(er) article!!!

If ever you’re feeling like you don’t belong, remember: Black Sheep Matter.

---

Indie Music Showcase 6/1/26

---