MGK’s Lost Americana is less a reinvention than a reckoning. Stripped of artifice but filled with urgency, this is the Cleveland rapper-singer’s Nebraska but also his Scarecrow, rooted in the perspective of a small-time kid who’s made it big and wonders what comes next.
The album’s sober clarity is propelled by the transformation in both the melodic register of MGK’s voice and his perspective as a songwriter. The rough, rebellious edge of his earlier work is sharpened here. A tension between control and chaos animates the intensely confessional “Treading Water,” which builds into a bridge spoken from someone who has clearly fucked up time and time again: “It’s a long road to redemption, and a shorter one to damnation.”
Elsewhere, there’s an unforced confidence to the arena-rock stomper “Don’t Wait Run Fast.” This is especially evident on the track’s pre-chorus, a declaration of intent which acknowledges MGK’s inability to simply give people what they want, as well as his now-established penchant for off-kilter genre switch-ups: “You want this? You got that.”
Musically, Lost Americana synthesizes the smorgasbord of genres MGK has flirted with—pop-punk, alt-rock, hip-hop—but filters them through a lens that feels more intentional and less piecemeal. Opener “Outlaw Overture” sets the stage with synth lines that evoke ’80s new wave, before gloriously exploding into widescreen rock, all while shifting gears into singer-songwriter soul-bearing that signals the album’s balance of intimacy and spectacle.
Blending spunky pop-rock angularity with bittersweet hooks, the pointedly titled “Cliché” deftly walks the line between sarcasm and sincerity. And the breezy “Miss Sunshine,” the closest thing to an unabashedly Top 40 moment here, feels effortless, tipping a hat to the past by lifting its chorus from AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” in the process.
Where Lost Americana truly excels, though, is in its pacing and rich emotional range. The closing trio of tracks, particularly “Can’t Stay Here,” trades drama for introspection, channeling the mature, reflective mood of full-blown balladry without ever lapsing into straight-faced cliché or sloppy sentimentality. The sorta-spoken-word, sorta-rapped “Indigo” is a surreal outlier on the album, but it candidly delves into the lowest lows of MGK’s life so far. But not before reminding you of his affable cornball side, notably when he claims “Living fantasy like J.K. Rowling/I’m J.R.R. Tolkien, these spliffs I love smokin’” before painting a grim picture of slow self-destruction.
There’s still some cheese one must stomach to fully engage with an MGK album, the awkward interpolation of Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” on “Starman” among them, but these are isolated disruptions, not indicative of a project struggling to find its footing. Rather, Lost Americana moves with the assuredness of an artist who’s wrestled with his demons, refined his tools, and emerged with something that commands attention on its own terms.
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Yes! MGK has grown up so much. His deep roots in rock n roll have really paid off in this one. I am calling it now: AOTY