This new mgk album is not good.

Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time, mgk album. mgk, rapper, singer, songwriter, multi-genre phenomenon. He is back with his seventh full-length LP, Lost Americana, a project that, believe it or not, I did actually have a modicum of hope going into this one, mostly because it seemed like a chance at something new, something different, the dawn of a new era, because mgk over the years has made many a rap record, and I have not enjoyed a single one. He also had a little stint with pop punk as well. Didn't like those either.

But now with this new one, he's trying something else, as forecast by songs like "Cliché" that really go overtly in a pop direction. Miraculously, he also had a little bit of an album trailer for this record narrated by none other than Bob fucking Dylan that built the album up to be this expression of American wonder and like a rebel attitude and that thing.

But actually going and listening to the album, I didn't really get any of that. I'm not really sure what to say about this record other than that it just feels like a bunch of boring, overproduced mid-paced pop rock, a lot of which borrows directly from radio hits of the '90s, maybe a bit too directly at points.

There's not really much to say about the album outside of that. I mean, as I was saying with the instrumentation and the production, it loses any bit of flavor or excitement it has pretty fast. I feel weird almost saying here that the pop punk influences on mgk's last couple of records comparatively were a bit more thrilling.

And that realization comes pretty quickly on the opening track "Outlaw Overture", where by the end of the song, the touched up lead vocals, the roaring guitars, the pounding loud but simultaneously stiff and boring drum beats all culminate in the most blaring but bland wall of sound.

Then after that, there's "Cliché", which I mentioned earlier, which, again, does see mgk going in a pop direction, but once again, this is like another genre, another sound that mgk is trying his hand at, and yet it proves to be just not his strong suit. Not only because I don't think mgk's flat, lifeless, near expressionless pop punk vocal affectation really fits on top of an instrumental like this, lends itself to something that should be more melodic, should be more expressive – but also the songwriting is hella derivative as well as a lot of the chords and melodies on this thing sound like a near copy of Eagle-Eye Cherry's "Save Tonight".

And I would much rather listen to that song.

Deeper into the record, we have more performative and underwhelming expressions of just how bad of a guy mgk is, how much of, again, he is a rebel. Whether it's on "Don't Wait, Run Fast", where he's singing at the top of his lungs about being pulled over for driving over 100 miles an hour. Or "Goddamn", which is a spotlit, acoustic ballad where mgk is waxing poetic about all the wasted years in his life and being a functional junkie, essentially. Also talking about how he swears too much – Fuck yeah! But again, all of these surface-level nods really never dig into anything deeper or darker or more personal.

We get more of a thorough character portrait on tracks like "Vampire Diaries", for example. But as mgk tries to paint himself as a bad guy, a dark figure on this cut, he's just using some of the most corny and cliché imagery and references that you can possibly think of with respect to being a vampire.

The midpoint of the album sees mgk delivering more pop rock instrumentals. Again, given just how uninspired and basic a lot of the instrumentation here is, it just makes me wonder why he even went in this direction. At least when doing a bit of a pop punk thing and working with producers like Travis Barker, I feel like there was at least an accuracy there in terms of trying to capture a certain energy and essence. Whereas the guitar and drum combo on "Miss Sunshine" sounds like what you would get from the YouTube stock music library if you were looking for something royalty free to play in the background of one of your videos.

Meanwhile, "Sweet Coraline" feels like I'm listening to the start of a really bad Matt and Kim song. With "Indigo", mgk takes us in what's essentially a rap monologue, trying to narrate his existence in this melodramatic Mike Shinoda way. After that, things shockingly get even more derivative, has the song "Starman" just features a straight-up interpolation of Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life", and not a very good one at that.

But what's even weirder is the song "Can't Stay Here", which feels like a near interpolation of a couple of different '90s radio hits, because there are moments where the guitars on this track feel like they're being borrowed straight up from the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris", but then certain vocal lines that crop up feel borrowed from Semisonic's "Closing Time". Then, as if the Goo Goo Dolls influence wasn't already apparent, on "Treading Water" rhe vocal melodies feel borrowed from "Iris"... from Goo Goo Dolls. I don't know why mgk put two tracks on this album back to back that feel like they're borrowing so overtly from the same song, the same moody '90s rock hit song.

"Tell Me What's Up" sees mgk doing some bars once again and giving us some Lincoln Park vibes. There are some hilarious, various standout bars on this track, like one where he's talking about having Viking blood coursing through his veins, and that's why all of his enemies have been thwarted. I mean, "Kill Shot" did happen. We do remember that. That is a thing we remember.

To close up shop, "Orpheus" is a super emotional piano ballad closer. But given just how corny the tracklist has been up until this point, this moment is just so unearned.

It's funny. My expectations going into this record weren't high. They were not high at all. What I was really hoping for was an album that at the very least wouldn't be offensively bad, wouldn't be disappointing, wouldn't be terrible, but lost Americana couldn't even deliver on that front.

It couldn't even meet or surpass that very low standard. And by comparison, I actually think Mainstream Sellout is a better project because at least there we're hearing songs that are performatively edgy, written performed in a pop punk context where that messaging and lyricism makes a bit more sense. Because right now with this record, when mgk is not doing that. All he's really left with at this point is some faux moody rap tracks and a bunch of stale '90s, post grunge, sad boy rock. His songwriting on that front is so cliché and so uninspired that when he goes in this direction, it just sounds like a near-carbon copy of his most obvious influences from that era.

In addition to all of that, this whole idea of this album speaking to something greater than mgk himself, capturing or exemplifying the idea of Lost Americana, it definitely falls short of that by a big, fat, wide, gigantic Grand Canyon-sized margin. Because, yeah, this record isn't really speaking to anything greater than just itself, which it is fine. There's nothing saying that artists have to do that, but that's not how this record was originally being pitched. There's like nothing "America" or "Americana" in any way about the sound or the messaging of this record, and even the elements of the writing on this record that signal like, traditional, badass, American rebel just fall so flat, feel so shallow, and are just not captivating at all.

Unfortunately, this new mgk record, it's not good.