by George Neal
Machine Gun Kelly has gradually become one of the most widely-hated music artists since his failed diss at Eminem just under four years ago. His first pop punk album Tickets To My Downfall was met with many mixed reviews, some admiring his surprising shift into a new genre, others ridiculing him as a defeated rapper trying to gain a new audience with Blink 182 re-enactments. As someone who initially dismissed MGK's music, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Tickets. It was filled with cheesy high-school-throwback lyrics and simple riffs, but in that, I saw someone who had experienced a fall from grace who now, with nothing to lose, is doing his own spin on a sound he grew up with without a care in the world. Thus, with the album’s catchy hooks, energetic vocals and drumming by legend Travis Barker, MGK perfectly captured a feeling of nostalgia: not trying to be completely original but merely channelling his darkness into making fun and varied 2000s tunes anyone can enjoy.
However, since Tickets, MGK has become notably-obnoxious in promoting his music. Gone is the album’s presentation of a self-aware underdog and, instead, he now makes headlines dissing classic influential rock groups and presents himself as the saviour of the genre with his harmless nostalgia songs. All this ugliness in his recent public persona has, unsurprisingly. leaked into his music with the arrival of his second pop punk album, Mainstream Sellout, delivering a record that is pretentious and ultimately unlikeable.
What Mainstream Sellout immediately makes clear is just how much MGK does, in fact, now care about people’s opinions after his last defiant free-spirited instalment, with its incessant complaining about critics with the grace of a twisted ankle. While Colson had previously made a couple nods to ratings to fit in with his music's themes of self-loathing and mental struggles, he now fully-insists on embarking the yelling teeth-baring defensive for his pop punk image alongside heavier guitars and more aggressive vocals, despite such a thing killing the self-aware fun that brought us tracks like Forget Me Too and Concert For Aliens. Tickets, as with any solid pop punk record, slipped melancholic emotions into energetic hooks and instrumentals to make them well-rounded, connectable tracks (‘I’m still young wasting my youth’ MGK sings with a contrasting sense of celebration on Drunk Face). Here, he treats a good deal of songs like scream-therapy sessions while half-trying to sound convincing delivering lyrics that are even more childish but with the nostalgic soul sucked out. If you can listen to songs like God Save Me and Papercuts with a straight face (‘Don’t belong! I’m a punk! Hello world! You f****ng suck!’) you deserve a medal. Now I’m not saying one shouldn’t make heavier music if you can channel your demons better, but you should at least shift your lyrical abilities past cartoonish levels of bubble-gum punk with it to gain at least some sort of credibility.
MGK no longer sounds passionate even on the tracks which painfully try to be catchy, instead coming off as desperately trying to keep chart numbers up. Even when a track come off as brighter and fun, there are so many unironically cringeworthy lyrics and concepts you have to tune out to enjoy them. Colson sings about his ideal girlfriend on Emo Girl while being completely clueless as to what constitutes as ‘emo’ before delivering the most hilariously-repetitive hook of the year. Drug Dealer has recycled romanticising of drug abuse with a PTSD-generating throwback to Lil Wayne’s disastrous attempt at rock with his 2010 Rebirth album. Even Maybe, which has a decent chorus and feature from Bring Me The Horizon, blatantly rips off the guitar work from renowned hit Misery Business, showing imagination has about hit rock bottom.
There are, however, glimpses of MGK’s potential to create immersive fast-paced rock tunes with his more serious approach. On, in my opinion, unquestionably the best song on the album, the intro track ‘Born with Horns,’ has a solid guitar progression, with a sombre interlude building up to a grand, frantic chorus which nicely utilises backing vocals and Travis’ drums. The outro to Twin Flame also provides a textured, off-the-wall barrage of cinematic guitarwork, which depressingly shows what could have been. But, at this point, I could not care less about the ‘potential’ MGK has to convincingly expand his pop punk beyond summery nostalgic jams and into heavier, emotionally-driven territory. He has already proven, with the vast majority of this album, how incapable he is with generating contemplative lyrics and how much he has allowed his ego to kill the enjoyment factor with the genre he claims to be the golden ambassador of. Tickets was an honest, human moment of self-serving passion. Mainstream Sellout is one of pitiful defensiveness and unleashing anguish in an overwhelmingly undignified way.
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