{"id":45060,"date":"2022-09-20T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=45060"},"modified":"2022-09-12T14:17:17","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T19:17:17","slug":"key-changes-machine-gun-kelly-and-mainstream-sellout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/key-changes-machine-gun-kelly-and-mainstream-sellout\/","title":{"rendered":"Key Changes: Machine Gun Kelly and Mainstream Sellout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As someone who’s had the song Emo Girl (featuring Willow Smith)<\/strong> stuck in their head on and off for weeks, I think this is a perfect time to explore controversial artist Machine Gun Kelly’s professional journey from hip-hop and rap to pop-punk and mainstream success, culminating in 2022’s appropriately-named album Mainstream Sellout<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

He rose to fame with a series of rap and hip-hop mixtapes (generally acclaimed) before releasing studio albums, starting with Lace Up in 2012, General Admission in 2015, and Bloom in 2017. Notable features included rapid-fire flow and pride in an unattractive underdog image. Then in 2020 he made a dramatic shift from rap to pop\/punk with the release of Tickets to My Downfall<\/strong> <\/em><\/a>– a shocking, impressive, and fluid album still with rap-inspired elements.<\/p>\n

Why did he make the move? Without knowing details, it reminds me of Lady Gaga’s professional journey (which is a blog post in itself) in which she made mostly loud statement pieces until she’d captured public attention and then, fame established, moved to a more stripped-down mainstream sound in albums like Joanne. (Lady Gaga, of course, has now moved back to her outlandish roots with the flashier album Chromatica, but I digress.) Sometimes musicians want to try something different and explore their other interests, but don’t have the freedom to do so until they’ve reached a certain level of success.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason he seems satisfied with his new career track, since he continued with pop\/punk in 2022’s album, Mainstream Sellout.<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0The reviews have been mixed, but the album has had big commercial success debuting high on the Billboard 200 charts.\u00a0Emo Girl ft. Willow<\/strong> is particularly good track (though I may be biased in saying that) — it’s a good example of the overall pop punk revival going on in the 2020s, partly because it’s extremely self-aware of how it’s referencing a scene more than participating in it. Rolling Stone called it “gleefully derivative” and on the whole the feeling is of playing a part and having a ton of fun with it.\u00a0 Willow Smith’s vocals shine, her gen Z energy a good balance to Kelly’s so-called “buzzsaw bubblegum”.<\/p>\n

For myself, I haven’t heard the whole album yet, but I enjoy Machine Gun Kelly better in pop-punk, which is one of my favorite genres. I know I may be in the minority; what are your thoughts on Machine Gun Kelly, Willow, or the pop-punk revival? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As someone who’s had the song Emo Girl (featuring Willow Smith) stuck in their head on and off for weeks, I think this is a perfect time to explore controversial artist Machine Gun Kelly’s professional journey from hip-hop and rap to pop-punk and mainstream success, culminating in 2022’s appropriately-named album[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,1,8],"tags":[3041,2844,4591,2872,1565],"class_list":["post-45060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-hip-hop","tag-music-cds","tag-music-review","tag-pop-music","tag-punk-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-bIM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45060"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45277,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45060\/revisions\/45277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}