How Machine Gun Kelly’s music shifted direction when he fell in love with Megan Fox

When American rapper Machine Gun Kelly fell in love with Hollywood actor Megan Fox, everything changed for him and his new album.

Falling in love in the time of COVID shifted gears on Machine Gun Kelly’s new record.

The rapper had already changed his musical course, linking with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker to unleash his inner pop punk for new record Tickets To My Downfall.

MGK met his now girlfriend Megan Fox in March on the set of the serial killer thriller Midnight In The Switchgrass with filming in Puerto Rico shut down after a week as the pandemic swept through the US.

Fox had recently separated from her actor husband Brian Austin Green and when paps snapped the Transformers star and the chart-topping rapper, whose real name is Colson Baker, hanging out in LA, the rumour mill anointed another celebrity coupling.

Megan Fox appeared in the music video for MGK’s Bloody Valentine. Picture: UMA (Universal Music Australia)

Their relationship was pretty much confirmed when Fox starred as his violent love interest in the video for Bloody Valentine in May.

“The first parts of the album, the backbone, the first 10 songs were done between January and February,” MGK says from his LA home.

“And then COVID hit, I got into a relationship and this new batch of songs came in.”

One was Banyan Tree, which he says is “very, very personal to me”. It’s a post-millennial Something Stupid, the pair singing to each other about getting tattoos of each other’s name and drinking too much tequila.

Another track that emerged in the past six months was Concert For Aliens.

When COVID hit, MGK found a wealth of new songs to write. Picture: UMA (Universal Music Australia)

“It was written after Covid came and the world turned to s … and I was thinking the aliens up there are all laughing at us down here because we have no idea what the f … to do to get a grip on ourselves and we’re tearing each other apart,” he explains.

“My thing was Concert For Aliens was me making a laughable reality show about the aliens probably up there watching it.”

And then there was the poignant Lonely, written after his father died in July.

The album closes with Play This When I’m Gone, a song for his 12-year-old daughter Casie.

“I cried in the booth when I was singing Lonely but the Play This When I’m Gone song, that was really close to my heart,” he says.

“I recorded that the day after I had this whole meltdown. The funny thing is that wasn’t even on the album until a week ago; it was a different song but that song couldn’t get cleared because there was a similarity to a Tom Petty song, so we had to switch it out.

“But ironically Play This fits perfectly and it’s a great way to end the album.”

MGK defiantly switched from rap to punk on his new record. Picture: UMA (Universal Music Australia)

MGK is exactly the artist to usher in the return of emo pop punk. While he clearly has the blessing of torchbearer Barker of genre heroes Blink 182 – who drums on and produces the record – MGK spent his formative years as an alternative guitar rock fan before switching to hip hop.

He started releasing mixtapes as a teenager, signed to a major label deal and was touted as Eminem’s heir apparent – until the pair started trading diss tracks a couple of years ago.

MGK’s stylistic shift – which he prefers to refer to as versatility rather than genre-hopping – appears to have been provoked by the fallout after his beef with Eminem.

But it is equally influenced by a desire shared by any of his pop-dwelling peers – from Billie Eilish to Taylor Swift – to not be creatively pigeonholed by the industry gatekeepers.

“Look at how the world tried to shun and write me off after a certain feud that happened two years ago. Look at how bad people wanted to count me out, that’s what I’m saying,” MGK says.

“This album wasn’t even made for anybody … you know what I mean? I’m already counted out, so I’m just going to go into the studio and make what I make and if it comes out, cool, and if doesn’t, that’s great too.

“I still gotta move my pen and that’s what came out. The universe fed it to me.”

The rapper turned punk rocker’s instincts have been vindicated.

His current single My Ex’s Best Friend with blackbear and Bloody Valentine are each closing in on 100 million streams.

“The biggest talk going into this was not a wave of support for me, it was a wave of ‘Why is he doing this? Why is he switching?’” he says.

“But that wave has changed, because obviously we see what the numbers and all that stuff are now, is bigger than almost anything else I’ve done in my career.

“That wave wasn’t even people not liking it, it was them acting like they didn’t like it and them not knowing that they subconsciously liked it.”

As he unleashes his new music on the world, he is also prepping for his next acting role opposite Sam Worthington in the action western The Last Son of Isaac LeMay.

“I can’t wait, I’m stoked. I actually just talked to him the other day about it. I leave in October to play a full-on psycho cowboy,” he says.

“It’s so sick I get to do this in film or music videos. What’s on the list to do? Like riding a wild orca. Not that I’m going to do it but like just being in the ocean and an orca coming and being like ‘Yo, hop on’ and you just hop on like a punk rock Aquaman.”

Tickets To My Downfall is out now.

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Originally published as How Machine Gun Kelly’s music shifted direction when he fell in love with Megan Fox