Machine Gun Kelly delivers a self-hating celebrity pop-punk purge with ‘Mainstream Sellout.’
This is exactly the defiant, ego-flaunting sneer that has turned Colson Baker, damaged child of itinerant Christian-missionary parents, into the inked and bleached “Machine Gun Kelly,” a feuding, celebrity-coupling cutie chameleon who careens from stage to gossip site to lawsuit. Like Pete Davidson — who giggles through a cameo on Take the gleefully derivative “Emo Girl,” which cross-references multiple pop-culture niches and has already inspired a “Butt Rock Girl” parody.
On opener “Born With Horns,” over a double-time breakbeat and slashes of guitar, he rap-moans “I don’t want to live anymore” and concludes on the more endearing, less snotty chorus, “In this film, I know there’s no happy endings.” He repeats that line in album closer “twin flame,” his attempt at a “Good Riddance ” with acoustic guitar and piano. On “Twin Flame,” as elsewhere, he’s broken and she’s too good, too pure, too magic for him, so it’s time to check out.
Kelly, at age 31, hasn’t realized that introspective songwriting doesn’t stop at admitting you’re a narcissistic piece of garbage. The title track — not quite two minutes of alt-Nineties chum — has an Auto-Tuned MGK crooning and wailing insults hurled by others. But the song sputters out and it’s on to “Make Up Sex,” where he boasts, “Face down, laid pipe / Waterworks, swam in your pool.
For the most part, Kelly uses rock to express his pain and rap to escape from it, i.e., abusing substances with Lil Wayne on two fairly pointless tracks. He has a nice rapport with Iann Dior on the pleasant pop-rock exercise “Fake Love Don’t Last.” But whether Kelly deploys “rock,” “rap,” or “pop,” selling out and annoying people online are the least of his issues. Maybe next time, his self-loathing death wishes could be the jumping-off point, not the be-all, end-all.
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