In 2020’s Tickets to My Downfall, the rapper MGK (formerly Machine Gun Kelly), born Colson Baker, transformed into a pop-punk prodigy, recruiting Blink 182’s Travis Barker as a producer. In a 2022 interview with Billboard, looking back on that album’s number one debut, Baker said, “I know it kills certain bands in the [rock] community that I got success. But I earned that s***.”
Genre is often restrictive for pop stars, whose primary goal is to capture the public imagination. In 2024, Beyoncé reimagined herself as a country star: a far cry from her debut as a member of the R&B girl group Destiny’s Child. Conversely, Taylor Swift abandoned country for pop, but has switched back and forth in the years since. The stars of the 2000s and early 2010s created a landscape where the main requirement of a singer is connecting with an audience, not necessarily producing a particular sound.
The pursuit of this goal motivated Machine Gun Kelly to switch from rap to pop-rock. In a 2022 interview with Spin, he reflected on the career stagnation that led to the self-mockingly titled album Tickets to My Downfall, saying, “At that time, I was completely written off. My agents weren’t getting blown up.”
Lost Americana, MGK’s seventh full-length album, rides the wave of success initiated by his genre pivot. 2022’s Mainstream Sellout also relied on this shift, living up to its title in a painfully obvious way: MGK found a sound that worked, but failed to innovate with it. However, Lost Americana picks up where Tickets to My Downfall left off, taking MGK’s newfound rock affinity and combining it with other genres.
In Americana, MGK uses a familiarity with hip-hop to convey the angst that has been central to his persona for over a decade. On “Indigo,” he says, “Put my newborn daughter to bed at eight / Then I’m back on the interstate.” On “Tell Me What’s Up”, he recalls friends who didn’t live to see the age of 30.
MGK had a tumultuous childhood. After his father’s job brought their family to Egypt, Kenya, and Germany, he settled in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, where Celeste Ng set the novel Little Fires Everywhere. A story of teens rebelling against cookie-cutter conformity, the book gives context to the former rapper’s origin story. MGK told Billboard, “I didn’t have enough money to buy the outfits the other kids had- it was just always something.”
As a reaction, the singer’s adult life is characterized by a devil-may-care attitude. The best songs on Lost Americana are its most fun: “Vampire Diaries” is an upbeat, electric guitar-driven plea for freedom from internal and external restrictions. “I put a cross around my neck just to find out if it burns,” MGK says. In the song’s music video, he performs in a museum, a cantankerous presence among priceless artifacts.
In a bizarre twist of cultural events, Bob Dylan narrated the promotional trailer for Lost Americana as a means of endorsing MGK as an artist. Dylan said, “This music celebrates…where the past is reimagined and the future is forged on your own terms.” Sonically, Lost Americana lives up to its title by combining pop-punk with acoustic elements, mirroring the shift of American pop music from folk-rock in the 1970s to synthpop in the 1980s: both changes that sacrifice authenticity for glamour.
On a personal level, Lost Americana serves as a metaphor for MGK’s family life: in 2024, he split with a girlfriend of several years, the actress Megan Fox, with whom he shares a daughter. In its most vulnerable moments, the album relies on rock to convey its creator’s pain. In “Treading Water”, a thunderous guitar riff follows the confession: “I broke this home / But I’ll change for our daughter so she’s not alone.” In “Orpheus”, Kelly compares himself to a mythical figure who travels to the Underworld to fight for the one he loves, but loses himself in the process.
Even when love slips away, in art, redemption comes by admitting when this occurs. Kelly confesses to his flaws throughout Lost Americana, mentioning a Christmas spent in rehab. However, the record’s opening track, “Outlaw Overture”, depicts its creator’s ideal version of himself by balancing intense contradictions. The song includes two parts: in the first, a synth-driven rock anthem, MGK vows to fake his own death to feel more alive. In the second half, backed by the plucking of an acoustic guitar and gentle harmonies, MGK pleads, “Take me somewhere cheap/where the livin’ is easy.”
Although full of upheaval, MGK’s unconventional childhood prepared him to evolve as an artist and meet the public’s need for a fresh sound. “The task of an entertainer is… to give part of yourself, including your comfort, away,” he told Billboard. Both personally and professionally, the rapper-turned-rockstar recognizes that something lost is something gained. “Baby, I’m a rolling stone,” he says on “Cliche”. That phrase certainly is a cliche, but with the approval of Bob Dylan himself, there remains a trace of blood on the tracks.