In the last half-decade of mgk’s career, he’s been many things to many people. The slayer of pop-punk’s gatekeepers. A blatant opportunist who got bullied out of hip-hop and jumped to something ‘easier’. An icon. A clown. Everything in between.
Right now, though, mgk is a normal, big artist. If you didn’t like him, or were never interested, you’ve got no obligation to keep tabs. If you did, you’ve got a solid recent album in lost americana and a clutch of pop-punk hits that inexplicably haven’t fermented into genre mulch. Nothing repudiates how disposable Tickets To My Downfall and especially mainstream sellout were, but there’s always been a tacit acknowledgment that, if they clicked live, there could be something there. Well, now, when there’s arguably less pressure on mgk to prove himself than ever, it’s the time to put that hypothesis to the test. In fact, that seems to be the hard-and-fast edict of this tour—make it click live. You’ve already got a far busier early-doors crowd than the Co-Op Live tends to see, and from the stage, a giant hand holding a cigarette sticks out from the curtain, as if to herald the spectacle to come.
Oh, and there’s also Julia Wolf; she’s here, too. Other than returning to duet on a cover of the Goo Goo Dolls’ Iris later, there’s not a lot to go on here, unfortunately. The thundery pop-rock sound with a bit of an emo lacquer is alright, until it runs together far too quickly. Wolf’s reedy voice, too, doesn’t travel to a suitable extent in an arena this size. Even when there’s a touch of emo-pop partway through for a slight nudge in tempo, there’s no great heightening of peaks or deepening of troughs; dynamism is not a prized commodity. If there’s one overwhelming positive, it’s that Wolf has this bubbly, excitable persona between songs that’s nice to see in a purveyor of sad-girl music. She’s evidently excited to be able to dedicate Jennifer’s Body to Megan Fox, or say that she has a song with Drake before Dog House. Still, it says something when the most noteworthy parts of a set are its celebrity name drops.
The comparison between that and what’s pumped into mgk’s set is night and day, honestly. The curtain pulls back to reveal that hand is attached to a derelict Statue of Liberty, from whose mouth emerges our headliner to make his grand entrance. Y’see, it doesn’t take long to clock the bonus goal of this tour—feeding the not-insignificant ego of Mr. Gun Kelly, often in the cringe ways you might associate with him. It begins before he even appears, with an on-brand, self-aggrandising monologue that calls him “the myth, the legend, the last rockstar”. On top of that, the deep lean into his ‘heartthrob’ status is…a lot. The first big scream comes from him unbuttoning his jacket before starman, almost calculated to the microsecond. It doesn’t stop there, either; there’s a certain visceral reaction spurred from this heavily-tattooed stick figure declaring “Guys, I like my skin to be hydrated; ladies, I like the inside of your pants to be hydrated, too.”
So perhaps we’re not entirely out of the realms of well-justified clowning with mgk yet, but for as long as he’s been around, you’ve had to take the (really, really) rough with the smooth. A high-brow, dignified display, this is not, nor was it ever expected to be, frankly. (The ongoing joke of having a penis-shaped charcuterie board onstage makes that apparent.) And especially as it goes along and they reach the clearly-telegraphed high points, you learn to roll with it. For as starkly limited as mgk is as a singer, there’s so much about the style and showmanship of what he does that can cover for it. bloody valentine is the apogee of that, a high-sugar pop-punk rush in which he’s flocked by a horde of girls onstage and the energy is left to spiral. It’s the same with forget me too and my ex’s best friend, and even ay! as an example of communal levity being the special sauce to get these songs anywhere.
It’s worth noting, too, that of the myriad genres touched upon with mgk’s catalogue, all are touched upon and pretty much done well. outlaw overture kicks things off as a big, freewheeling rock anthem, the kind of thing that mgk’s current brand is dyed in. Of course pop-punk plays a big role, though it’s nice to see relatively sidelined cuts like jawbreaker and nothing inside benefit from the rising tide. Hip-hop is less represented, though snippets of El Diablo and a rap-rock reduxed Till I Die—and the announcement of a new rap album coming this year—serve to remind that mgk can still do this. Even his more straight-up pop work is wisely saved for the end, a closing run that speeds by but comes encrusted with titanic singalongs for Lonely Road (as well as the first utterance in human history of the phrase “Sing my brother Jelly’s verse”), and even some light choreography steps during cliché and vampire diaries.
It’s an inhuman level of effort from someone who’s regularly seen as a hanger-on at best, though the filled stage would suggest there’s more than just mgk himself to appreciate. With additional dancers and the size of the accompanying band, you really feel how much has been sunk into this as a glossy, big-budget arena show. And there’s legit talent at play, too. Any worries that Sophie Lloyd might be slumming it here are put to rest with a couple of solos to make her own on goddamn and my ex’s best friend, the latter extending the song with some stratospheric vibrancy. JP Cappelletty’s drumming similarly makes a splash, even if his noteworthiness is ultimately a conduit for another arena show drum solo. Yes, you’re working with Travis Barker’s material for the most part, but that doesn’t make this practice any less of a snoozefest.
Naturally, though, the lion’s share of the floor goes to mgk, and it’d be a missed opportunity if there wasn’t something more genuine and meaningful done with that. You may get some interlude skit where a streamer (who could be a real one; who knows / cares?) criticises his rock material and elicits the performative pantomime boos, but that’s the throwaway stuff. Early on, there’s genuine, dazzled gratitude expressed for this being the most amount of tickets sold for an mgk show in the UK, and you can spin a lot of the set’s undertones from that. The mood is celebratory, yes, but it can also be pensive, or intimate with this many willing to listen. From the B-stage in the crowd comes a piano-led dont let me go and the acoustic times of my life, as well as a kinship with Manchester as a city of ordinary, hard-working people pursuing their dreams. And when play this when i’m gone is accompanied by a montage of home videos of mgk and his daughter growing up, it’s all just…nice.
And, look—a cynical mind might view all of this as a borderline mercenary reframing of mgk’s modern narrative. His recent works still aren’t great on their own, nor are they more meaningful with the benefit of time. But in the context of what this night is about—a hardscrabble artist taking equally hardscrabble work and blowing the roof off the biggest venue in the UK with it—that’s where meaning is prescribed. You can go into this show with the most pessimistic view possible, and still leave with at least a bit of enjoyment displacing some of that dourness; that’s just the reality of it. So, yeah, it does click live, to a monumental degree.
Words by Luke Nuttall
