MGK Blurs Genres, Brings Out Lainey Wilson, and Solidifies Star Status at Nashville’s Skydeck

Cleveland-raised, genre-blurring rising superstar MGK played a headlining set at Nashville’s Skydeck on Tuesday night. McKenna Grace and Avery Anna opened, Lainey Wilson appeared as a guest of MGK.

Tuesday night’s free Nashville showcase at Broadway’s Skydeck of genre-destroying, Cleveland-raised pop star Machine Gun Kelly (aka MGK) seemed like an awakening of kindred spirits.

About 2,000 fans gathered in a 100,000-square-foot building on a humid fall evening.

And then a hailstorm broke out.

MGK thunders into the country’s redefined pop expectations

“Man, it’s a f—in’ vibe,” said the artist, who for two decades has been trying to deal with trauma related to childhood bullying, depression and tragedy through graffiti tagging, guitar riffs , kick-flipping and singing. and wrote his way through no less than half a dozen music genres, selling 5 million albums and 50 million singles.

This past year, he arrived in Nashville at the behest of his Grammy-nominated and bluesy-crooning rapper and country singer buddy Jelly Roll. This happened simultaneously with the centuries-long traditions of country music winning a metaphorical firefight with the wisdom of the music industry across all genres.

As a result, country music and Western culture will not remain pop outliers for the next fifty years.

“This was supposed to be an acoustic set, but tonight looks like we planned it out of a Hollywood movie,” MGK continued on the Skydeck stage.

If MGK was an artist who fit the country’s traditions, an acoustic set would have made sense. But, like the hailstorm that accompanied the first half of his concert, he struggles uncomfortably against expectations, washing away the old while thundering in the new.

Raw lyrics inspire serious interactions between artist and audience

During the performance, MGK smoked about half a pack of American Spirit cigarettes.

MGK performed nine songs Tuesday night, following child actress and teen pop artist opener McKenna Grace and 20-year-old CMT Next Women of Country class member of 2024 Avery Anna.

During the first quartet of songs, he nervously navigated his way through “BMXXing” by performing as if he were a local rapper at an open mic night, depending on the crowd keeping him excited and reflexively moving in bars spat to get him. Through. “Papercuts” followed as he picked up the first of five guitars he would play within an hour, pounding his way with the grunge crunch in the style of the Green Day “Dookie” album.

He started to calm down with a solo version of his 2019 collaboration between YUNGBLUD and Travis Barker, ‘I Think I’m OKAY’, the pop-rock grooves, thousands of screaming fans and the sudden cool chill of a storm-swept breeze seemed to him to calm down – at least that’s what conventional logic would have you believe.

“I Think I’m OKAY” contains the following horribly raw revelation of a lyric:

“I guess it’s just my life and I can handle it if I want to / But I can’t hide in the hills of California / ‘Cause these hills have eyes and I got paranoia / I hurt myself sometimes, is that too scary for you?”

Singing those thoughts every night is probably much less easy than it seems. MGK jumped off stage and hugged fans over the guardrail while signing autographs between songs to calm himself. As he sang about suicidal thoughts, he looked at a young fan on his mother’s shoulders. When he finished, he acknowledged her:

“Oh my God! That was you in West Virginia?!?!? It was a bunch of sports fans, but you, a little girl who kept smiling at me, got me through that show! Thanks for being here!” As the audience roared with approval, he invited the girl and her mother to sit on stage for the remainder of the show.

MGK’s balladeer work promotes his journey towards healing his traumas

“I smile from the feeling of being in a room full of friends – it’s that or the mushrooms,” MGK joked on stage.

MGK happily hugged no fewer than six children during his live set.

Doing real-life versions of songs like the pop-punk ballad “Forget Me Too,” he fell off his knees like Jimi Hendrix at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

As I sang “don’t let me go,” the lyrics were: “I’m a child running from secrets that I hate and I never confronted them / I just called my mother / Said I forgive her for not being there was when I needed one” It hit differently, given his recent revelation on Jelly Roll’s wife Bunnie

When he sang his version of Zach Bryan’s “Sun to Me” and arrived at the line, “Find someone who grows flowers in the darkest parts of you,” it not only empowered MGK by discovering a personal route to country authenticity, but also something about how his work in the genre reflects finally having a space where he can proudly show his best, healing self to the world.

Lainey Wilson appears, euphoria ensues

Instead of Jelly Roll appearing during MGK’s performance of their new duet “Lonely Road,” he was instead joined by the country’s reigning Entertainer of the Year, Lainey Wilson.

The moment caused the brightest euphoria to shoot out of MGK’s blackened chest and out of his mouth in a manner that resembled the most bizarre Care Bear ever.

It also allowed him to proclaim the next course of the mainstream country industry’s cross-genre, pop culture-invasive action.

‘”Lainey being here makes me feel so accepted in the community here in Nashville – (‘Lonely Road’) is not just a country song, or whatever you want to call it. It’s a US song that speaks volumes about the community development in this city.”

The idea that embracing the truth inspires unparalleled freedom is at the heart of where country music leads American popular culture. On Tuesday night, there were moments that followed that expression of honesty: three happy children stood on stage with MGK and sang along to “Bloody Valentine.”

“I don’t do fake love, but I’ll take some from you tonight (take some from you tonight) / I know I gotta go, but maybe I’ll just miss the flight / I can’t stay forever, let’s play like it / And treat this night like it’s gonna happen again / You’ll be my damn valentine tonight,” they sang.

“We were only supposed to make a few songs, but it’s not in my ethos to do that,” MGK said on stage.

On some level, describing everything that unfolded onstage Tuesday night can feel like you’re speaking in mentally unhinged word salads. But by embracing everything that happened as seriously as possible – as MGK honestly tried to embrace each of the nearly 2,000 fans in attendance – and what seems unhinged, it melts into cheerful innocence.