MGK Is a Tabloid Heartland Rocker on ‘Lost Americana’

Since emerging as a hyperactive, scaffolding-scaling rapper in the early 2010s, MGK — formerly Machine Gun Kelly, born Colson Baker — has forged his own path through the pop-cultural consciousness. He’s feuded with Eminem; he’s engaged in egregious red-carpet PDA with his onetime flame Megan Fox; he’s acted in movies and TV, with his full-body channeling of Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee being a highlight of the hard rockers’ 2019 biopic The Dirt. And, oh yes, he’s released records.

In 2020, MGK fully pivoted from hip-hop to pop-punk with Tickets to My Downfall, a collection of punchy, hooky cuts that included the spittle-flecked Halsey duet “Forget Me Too” and the trap-tinged blackbear collab “My Ex’s Best Friend.” He continued playing with genre in the ensuing years, even calling his brand of bummed-out emo-rap “sadboy” on a 2024 joint EP with fellow Ohioan Trippie Redd.

Mgk has always had a quintessentially — if oddly — American public-facing persona, which was only highlighted by how he managed to get Bob Dylan to provide a voiceover for the album’s trailer. (Dylan called MGK’s latest work, “ music that celebrates the beauty found in the in-between spaces.”) On his seventh album, he musically and thematically updates the concept of “heartland rock,” the storytelling-heavy, road-trip-ready strain of guitar music made by the likes of John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen. 

Opening track “Outlaw Overture” announces itself with a heat-lightning blast of synths that leads to a pugilistic defense of his rebellious nature, then shape-shifts into starlit balladry that further reveals MGK’s truly American dream: “Take me somewhere cheap/Where the livin’ is easy/Out of all their reach/Set my spirit free,” he wails, extending the last “e” sound to the length of an interstate. “Indigo” shows the way hip-hop has become part of American pop music’s fabric, his knotty rhymes detailing the tribulations he’s endured over the last few years; “Sweet Coraline” uses Strokes-inspired guitar choppiness to illustrate the unsettling feeling of being treated like an avatar of celebrity in real life. 

MGK’s let-it-all-hang-out persona is the real star of the show, and his lyrics — which will no doubt be pored over by people looking for more details on his love life — are often razor-sharp: “Only lights on my horizon are ones that pull me over,” he muses on the camaraderie-dappled “miss sunshine.” That quality makes “Cliché” feels like an in-joke that should have stayed in the studio, combining well-worn lyrical tropes (“Baby, I’m a rolling stone,” “You should run away with me/Even if you’re better off alone”) with music that splits the difference between ‘00s adult contemporary and modern pop-country. But it also shows how MGK, who at 35 has already lived at least two lifetimes of stardom, is, for better or worse, always in perpetual motion.

From Rolling Stone US.