Machine Gun Kelly has joined forces with Sheffield rockers Bring Me the Horizon on maybe, the latest single from his forthcoming record, Mainstream Sellout.
In the same pop-punk style MGK has adopted since his last album, 2020's Tickets to my Downfall, maybe is an aggressively catchy powerchord-fueled anthem, led by a raw acoustic guitar intro and with smatterings of clean palm-muted electric guitar arpeggios in the verses. Check it out below.
maybe is the fourth single released from Mainstream Sellout, after the angsty, Whammy-heavy Papercuts, Emo Girl – his noughties-inspired collaboration with fellow pop-punker Willow Smith – and ay!, which sees him partially return to his hip-hop roots with the help of rapper Lil Wayne.
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Mainstream Sellout is set to arrive March 25 via Bad Boy/Interscope. The album was originally due to be titled ‘Born With Horns’ – a phrase that MGK and producer/collaborator Travis Barker had tattooed on their forearms in August last year – however it was renamed earlier this year.
The album's cover art – which MGK revealed on social media earlier this week – sees the rapper-turned-rocker holding a reinvented version of his trademark single-humbucker Schecter PT, which was released as an official signature model last year.
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While it's not exactly a close-up view, we can see that the guitar has an inverted color scheme, with a black body and headstock finish, pink humbucker and five pink lines between the pickup and fretboard. The guitar again features a cursive Schecter logo on the headstock and a double XX inlay at the 12th fret, but this time sports ‘Sellout!’ inlays on frets one through eight.
Could this mean a new version of MGK's signature model will soon be available to the public? We'll keep you informed if and when we know more.
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Following the reveal of Mainstream Sellout's cover art earlier this week, some, including Rolling Stone, pointed out similarities between the artwork and that of Japanese Breakfast's 2021 album, Jubilee, as fruit is blurred in the foreground of each.
Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner quickly took to Twitter to comment on the comparisons, jokingly stating that she'd found herself in the “feud of the year”.
Machine Gun Kelly responded to Zauner's tweet shortly after, noting that the comparisons had led him to Japanese Breakfast's music, adding that he's since become a fan of the experimental pop outfit.
“So should we beef over tomatoes or should I thank them for introducing me to your album, because I just listened and I really like it,” he wrote.
so should we beef over tomato’s or…should i thank them for introducing me to your album, because i just listened and i really like it 🎶🔥March 15, 2022
In an interview with Pitchfork published on Monday (March 14), Zauner said she thinks Mainstream Sellout's doesn't look “anything like” Jubilee's.
“I think it’s very funny that Rolling Stone put up an article about it just because there’s a circular fruit in the foreground. I mean his is people throwing tomatoes at him, and mine is persimmons peacefully hanging around me, so I think they’re very different concepts.”
In other news, earlier this week Machine Gun Kelly was accused by a TikTok user of faking his guitar playing onstage, a claim MGK himself subsequently refuted.
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Sam was Staff Writer at GuitarWorld.com from 2019 to 2023, and also created content for Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Player. He has well over 15 years of guitar playing under his belt, as well as a degree in Music Technology (Mixing and Mastering). He's a metalhead through and through, but has a thorough appreciation for all genres of music. In his spare time, Sam creates point-of-view guitar lesson videos on YouTube under the name Sightline Guitar.
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