Tickets To My Downfall, Machine Gun Kelly
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Machine Gun Kelly’s first pop-punk album puts him where rap hasn’t so far. Machine Gun Kelly dives into early 2000’s pop-punk with Tickets To My Downfall and debuts at No.1 on the Billboard 200 Chart.
With his roguish blue-collar image and Hot Topic wardrobe, Machine Gun Kelly always seemed more lightweight than his self-serious alternative rap music suggested. Machine Gun Kelly made his name as a Cleveland rapper known for his high-adrenaline singing style and infamous tattoos. But on Tickets To My Downfall, he tries a new gambit that works surprisingly well, dabbling with the 90s and early-2000s pop-punk. Tickets To My Downfall adds more degrees of climb to his already impressive trajectory, with less “Oh, the humanity,” and more, “Woah, the profanity.”
This album swells with a heart of pure Warped Tour pop-punk nostalgia with Machine Gun Kelly’s usual rapping firmly put on the back burner. In his opener, “title track,” Machine Gun Kelly draws his brat-rock energy from a genuinely damaged school of emo-informed hard knocks. He sings with snarls and goes on to list the drugs he takes to dull his pain, a common theme for the young singer, as sugar-sharp guitars chase him from slashing verses to an engagingly whiny chorus.
“My ex’s best friend,” the third single off the album which features blackbear, favors this spot-on rush of fizzy melody, sticky choruses and caffeine-bomb energy. Blackbear, a similarly brooding, tattooed Instagram ex-boyfriend, writes wallowing R&B from the perspective of the lover. Thus, his vengefulness makes him a deeply unsympathetic narrator. Moreover, “my ex’s best friend” paired with the speedy “WWIII,” anthemic “kiss kiss” and energetic “title track,” make you feel as if you had fallen over and landed at a barbecue with all your best friends and loads of beer. There’s probably someone skateboarding nearby. You might even get a kiss.
And one can't fail to mention the influential producer and imaginative collaborations that made this album flourish. From drummer and producer Travis Barker, who throws in a couple of clever musical flourishes around the margins, to Halsey's glorious firepower shouts on the jauntily heartbroken high point "forget me too," Tickets To My Downfall never gets bogged down as the energy keeps going.
But don’t forget to pay attention to the darker lyrics, as the strain and stress fuelled in his metaphors come into a bit more focus with “I used a razor to take off the edge, jump off the ledge they said / Take the lazer, aim at my head and paint the walls red, I said,” and “If I were a painter I’d be a depressionist.” It’s an open diary pouring with vulnerability and honesty that fills the whole album. Confessional and unflinching, at once a sting in the pop-punk good times, but all the more original for it. Perhaps, then the person wondering when this will all come crashing down is Machine Gun Kelly himself.
Despite its “I’m a big drunk mess” lyrical monomania, Tickets To My Downfall is the product of a guy who’s found a fresh lease on life by inserting himself inside a new musical tradition. From angst breakup jams that rock hard to bittersweet operatic ballads anchored by heavy basslines, Machine Gun Kelly finally found both a genre and producer as brazenly allergic to subtlety as he is. Even the cover of Machine Gun Kelly looking defiant and tortured holding a pink guitar near an empty pool reveals this album's emotional center and musical appeal.
In a certain sense, Machine Gun Kelly’s rebirth as a pop-punk revivalist might be the ultimate form of fan service—the aesthetic is far more suitable for his rock and Warped Tour following. Thematically, Tickets To My Downfall is hardly a departure from Machine Gun Kelly’s past work, but the new surroundings and production lighten his music considerably. With Travis Barker on his side, he might win over the skeptics accusing him of trend-hopping, but the best part of Tickets To My Downfall is that he doesn’t take the whole endeavor too seriously.
WORDS BY REBECCA PERLA, WEBMASTER