Machine Gun Kelly

One Liner: Rapper turned generic pop punker

Wikipedia Genre: Hip Hop, pop-rap, rap rock, pop punk
Home:  Cleveland, OH

Poster Position: 2
Both Weekends.

Friday at 4pm on the Honda Stage.

Thoughts:   I had no clue that this was going to be pop punk.  I had thought, this entire time, that Kelly was a rapper.  Didn't he have a rap beef with Eminem at one time?  Instead, this is some Blink 182-sounding stuff.  Seems like we have a lot of Blink-ish bands here this year - did Travis Barker buy an interest in C3?

Real name is Colson Baker.  He got his break from Puff Daddy signing him to Bad Boy.  In an extremely confusing turn of events, he won "Top Rock Artist" at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards.  Which is honestly just deeply confusing.  He was up for the award against AC/DC, AJR, Five Finger Death Punch, and twenty one pilots.  What the actual hell, Billboard?  Who came up with those nominees?  I guess no women made rock last year?  What a garbage list of rock.  Seriously, even if you think the Pearl Jam, Green Day, or Springsteen records last year were no good, are you trying to tell me that this shite is better than the HAIM disc?  The Soccer Mommy album?  Fontaines DC, Hum, Phoebe Bridgers, Waxahatchee, Car Seat Head Rest, My Morning Jacket?  I'm unnecessarily worked up here.  Sorry.

Ah, looks like his old albums were rap, but then he shifted into pop punk with his most recent album - 2020's Ticket's to my Downfall - which has his most popular tracks.  The pop punk stuff is entirely forgettable, except for when it's terrible.  "kiss kiss" involves a chorus where he sings "kiss kiss, kiss kiss the bottle all night. Hello, Goodbye."  It would have been cheesy if Avril Lavigne had done it 20 years ago, but trying to pass it off right now, its just embarrassing to even listen to it.  And then, literally, if you played me "concert for aliens" or "nothing inside" and told me they were un-used b-sides from Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, I'd believe you.  And the songs are tiny - 15 songs clock in under 37 minutes.  I guess that is a plus?  The big track is one with blackbear, called "my ex's best friend," that uses some trap elements in addition to the pop punk instrumentation.  311.3 million streams.

Huh.  blackbear appears to be a rapper as well, with some of those painful looking throat tats.  Why does this song have 331 million streams?  

One of his newest singles, which somehow has 40 million streams, is deeply unpleasant.  "DAYWALKER! (feat. CORPSE)" has a crappy beat and has about half of it's runtime taken up by Kelly just screaming the word FIGHT!

The dude is also an actor now.  I have seen him in two roles - as Tommy Lee in The Dirt (pretty okay) and as a jerk in the Sandra Bullock movie Bird Box about monsters who only get you if you see them.  Which was very weird.

I tried his first album out as well, and the opening track is just plain terrible.  2015's General Admission opens with "Spotlight," and its a bombastic mess of a song, trying so hard to sound important but just falling on its face.  No wonder Eminem made fun of this guy.  Actually, I just went and read up on that feud, and it all started when Kelly tweeted that Eminem's 16-year old daughter was "hot as fuck."  Seems totally fair for Em to hate the kid after that, but I also have two young daughters, so keep your goofy blonde ass away from them kids.  The top track from this first album is called "Till I Die," with 135.5 million streams.  

I guess he is proud to be from Cleveland?  Seems like a weird thing to be proud of.  That being said, that track is legitimately good.  Tough beat and good lyrics.  Over 123 million views of that video too?  Crazy.  He also has a track on here with stupid ass Kid Rock.  Gross.  This album is over an hour long too, which is just too much.  I also like "Oz," sounds like a classic UGK track.  "Merry Go Round" sounds like he is copying Eminem.

The interesting thing is how hard he reps Cleveland up there, when his Wikipedia says he was born in Houston, and then moved around a lot, until settling in Denver.  But it looks like he finished high school in Cleveland, so I guess settling on that as his identity makes sense.

I reviewed his 2017 album years ago: 

Machine Gun Kelly - Bloom.  This guy seems like a jackass.  I read a short article about him in RS a few months ago, and he has one of those personalities that makes you just shake your head.  First, the description of his sartorial choices:

"His fashion sense is singular: Think Axl Rose styled by Elton John during a blackout. Tonight, he's got on a distressed, acid-washed pale-blue denim jacket with "Thrill Ryde" etched on the back, a black and red floral shirt, low-hanging black jeans (with safety pins where the fly should be, a wallet chain, plus a black bandanna in a rear pocket) and pink-tinted circular-lensed glasses not unlike the pair Canadian reggae artist Snow wore in the "Informer" video. The shades nearly match the ruby grilles on his teeth."

Ugh.  Or this great quote (now that he is going some movie and television work):

"On the set of a sci-fi movie he just shot, an actor playing a cop kept punching him in the chest, for real, in take after take. When he complained, he says, he was told to suck it up. "As Colson Baker, I took that loss on the chin," MGK says. "But, like, dude: Machine Gun probably would've whupped his fucking ass."

That is like fourth person speaking in the 12th person about a fictional person in the first person through the fourth wall.  And so douchey.  "If I would have been myself when I'm rapping when you punched me I would have killed you, bro!  But since I was just me and not myself then its cool"  And, finally:

"I just gave everything. I gave everything on that fucking stage! That's not right! They don't even know! I might not even walk the same at 40 years old because of how much shit I leave onstage. I'm fighting every night up there! How are you dissatisfied?"

Come on, man.  If you literally are damaging your ability to walk in 13 more years, which I sincerely doubt, then you are doing it wrong.  So stupid.  Just jam your weak pop punk raps out and people will still enjoy.  Or not.  But you get paid either way.  Don't injure yourself. "Let You Go" is the bad pop punk rap song I'm thinking of here, but the massive hit (and yes, this clown really does have a massive hit) is "Bad Things," which features Camila Cabello and boasts over 284 million streams.  (that is now up to 531.6 million since then).

Biting a little bit of Pachelbel's Canon in D, but also some of Austin band Fastball's "Out of my Head," to make a radio-friendly cross-over hit like just about every one of Eminem's recent hits with some lady singer on board.  Not a fan of that song or the rest of this album. Bits of it got my head nodding, but nah."

So, I apparently loved it!  The top track from his 2019 album, the one right before he went "punk" shows some leaning into that style.  "I Think I'm OKAY" features YUNGBLUD and Travis Barker (told you that guy keeps popping up!).  284.8 million streams.

Weird that the lady friend he has at the start looks like YungBlud if he shaved his terrible haircut off.  I saw Yungblud with the kids at ACL a few years back, and that dude absolutely made his show difficult to watch with small children.  What I realized about 5 minutes into the show was that the kids thought that they were about to see 5 Seconds of Summer, because they had a popular song right then called "Youngblood."  They were deeply disappointed when it ended up being a heavily makeup'ed guy in a leg cast yelling F bombs and poking out his tongue.

I just asked my 13 year old what she thinks about MGK, and she had never heard of him.  I am irrationally pleased by this fact.  I even played the track with the bear guy and she didn't recognize it.  There is hope for the youth.

Unfortunately, my buddy that I do ACL with has already warned me that he wants to see this.  So, I'm just going to have to suck it up and go jam out to the Blink 182 redux action.  Oh well, at least he didn't tell me I have to go watch any of the 38 other pop punk wannabes.