Billboard have crowned for us a new pop-punk prince, but is anyone buying it?
2022 is the year of Machine Gun Kelly. blame Billboard. i don’t make the rules.
Machine Gun Kelly in Billboard
MGK (real name Colston Baker) is big news now. big in the way that Taylor Swift was when she went pop. the sort of big that has you hearing their music in tv adverts, in high street stores, from cars passing on the street… unavoidably big.
and just like back when 1989 came out (whenever that was), i don’t like it. i’d barely heard a moment of MGK’s music before Billboard magazine heralded him ‘pop-punk’s crown prince’. and frankly, i was happier for not knowing.
this is what it must have felt like for peasants in ye olden days when the newest monarch’s hype men passed by to let you know who’s running the show now. you’re just bopping about minding your own business when they come along and say ’you are now a subject of King Blah Blah the (insert number here), and you’re left thinking ‘who is this fool? why should i care?’
well, judging from his Billboard interview, MGK definitely thinks of himself as a complicated, misunderstood and tortured soul… but also the ‘saviour of rock’.
of his 2020 album, Tickets to My Downfall, which debuted at no.1 on the us Billboard chart — the first rock album to do so in over a year at the time — he claimed that its success ‘opened the lane back up for people to make money… [Rock] needed a defibrillator. who cares who gives it, just as long as that motherf–ker doesn’t die?’ elsewhere in the article, he applauds his initiative to play guitar in today’s guitarless world of mainstream pop: ‘the 2010s was great for singers and rappers, and i was part of that. but i think we needed something else: we needed an instrument.’
many people aren’t buying it though. some remain to be convinced of his transition from rapper to rocker, although to be fair to him, MGK co-opted the aesthetics of pop-punk several years ago, and began exhibiting musical traces of the genre on his 2019 release, Hotel Diablo. the closer, I Think I’m Okay — his attempt at a pop-punk anthem — employs no less than genre veteran Travis Barker of blink-182, who went on to become his second-in-command on Tickets to My Downfall. you’d think you can’t go wrong with a co-sign like that.
but even that camp of purists is drowned out on social media by those who have a visceral contempt of him. they see past the guitar pose, body piercings, tattoos and dyed hair through to his many self-inflicted controversies, and call bs on his persona. in light of blood rituals with current beau Megan Fox and lusting after females of a questionably young age (notably Eminem’s daughter and Kendall ‘Pepsi’ Jenner) before that, they have a point.
the following passage from the Billboard article address this head-on:
… His offstage antics, combined with the fact that his corporeal form would not have been out of a place on a ’90s runway, have not always made him the easiest person to root for. ‘My own friend was like, “I couldn’t even listen to your music at first because I just didn’t like your face,”’ says Baker with a half-laugh, swiveling a pair of Zen meditation balls in his palm. ‘He’s not wrong!’
ah. so he knows what he’s like…
‘… the world [is] like, “F–k you, dude, you’re a rich rock star. How hard could it be?”’
and he believes that he is wise enough to have identified himself as the fool first…
… he has gotten into the habit of telling the joke before anyone else can. Hence, a title like Tickets to My Downfall. ‘It’s either really ironic or I called it, you know?’ explains Baker as he hunches on his white leather sofa. ‘It’s like the ultimate checkmate.’
but for all his archness and provocateur behaviour, one problem remains: his music. to take 2 singles from newest album mainstream sellout: Papercuts is probably MGK’s best effort at an emo / grunge dirge — partly thanks to Travis Barker’s drumming, as ever — but it’s only interesting if you’ve never heard of acts such as Silverchair; what makes Maybe a decent emo effort is Oli Sykes of genre stalwarts Bring Me the Horizon, whose screams and shouts give the song a much sought after credibility.
and the album? it’s… fine. a solid 2-star venture. he is good enough to hire the likes of Travis Barker and Oli Sykes (not to mention Lil Wayne) as consultants to his artistic pretensions, and make it work. on the flipside, no amount of acquired talent can mask the fact that mainstream sellout confirms MGK to be to pop-punk what YouTubers Logan and Jake Paul are to comedy: less princely than cringey. hence bizarre live performances that appear to justify everything his haters have against him.
Machine Gun Kelly decided to cover System Of A Down's "Aerials" live on Howard Stern and it's so much worse than you could ever imagine pic.twitter.com/87JWfitNTd
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) April 1, 2022
and hence a pop-punk phase that so far has displayed nothing but a predictable stew of rock clichés about drugs, sex, and narcissism. in a world where many pop stars have genuinely moving, witty, and thought-provoking takes on sexuality, gender identity, politics, mental health, and more, MGK is stuck on being ‘particularly attuned to the mythologies of rock stardom’, to the point of boredom.
again, to be fair to MGK, this problem is bigger than him. in fact, it is something that needs to be discussed in the context of the rap-to-rock star pipeline. rappers have forced 21st century guitar-based popular music to assimilate their vocal and rhythmic stylings; if anything, one could argue that adopting rock star attitudes in return has limited their imaginative faculties (Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red album comes to mind). and MGK is no exception to this. during the Billboard interview, when he is asked ‘do you ever feel like you get caught up in romanticising the idea of being tortured?’ MGK responds: ‘do I invite the torture or create the torture on myself? probably. romanticise? no.’
really? it is hard to understand the distinction he makes, given his preoccupation with ‘the torture’ of rock excess, which makes it even harder to buy into his self-pity:
I have real loss. I have real vulnerability. I have real regrets. I just want to be given the same respect that you would give yourself to f–k up and bounce back.
if he eschewed the rock star narrative, he might gain that respect from a wider cross-section of the record-streaming public. he might find a more interesting and original way to express his feelings too. but he doesn’t care, or least he thinks he should act as if he doesn’t care, and will likely continue — to paraphrase cartoon character Daria’s description of her own sister — to wear controversy like a suit of armour, probably because he is afraid of looking inside and finding absolutely nothing for anyone, let alone Billboard, to write home about.
that said, he needn’t care what the naysayers think, commercially speaking. the first-week charting and sales of mainstream sellout indicate that MGK commands a large enough portion of the market to ‘own’ as many summers as he pleases. but, when the ‘reigning poster boy of not giving a f–k’ finally does sort out just how many f–ks he wants to, or should, give, only then might he produce that game-changing album he secretly wants critical acclaim for, rather than pale imitations of his heroes’ past work.