Rapper Machine Gun Kelly recently released his pop punk record Tickets to My Downfall. The album features Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and went straight to No. 1 on the US Billboard, US Top Rock Albums, and US Top Alternative Albums charts. All the attention on the record has led Machine Gun Kelly to believe that maybe, just maybe, he's the one that'll turn the younger crowd on to guitar music.
"This album might be the reason why bands of our generation, instead of the Foo Fighters, Green Day or one of those established artists, get to headline Coachella and shit like that – because this album is gonna make the demand for guitar music go up! It’s tapped into the new generation of kids, the 13-to-18-year-olds, that those bands I just named can’t reach at this point," he said in an interview with NME.
Kelly later adds he wants "young kids to be comfortable to pick up a guitar and try because that was an important thing with me. It wasn’t like I was on some Prince shit where the first time the world saw me I was nailing it. I had to struggle to get here."
Look. Tickets to My Downfall is absolutely not for me at 30 years old, but I see the appeal and I get how it could be a gateway for kids to get into punk and rock. So more power to folks like Machine Gun Kelly and Post Malone for integrating rock into their sound.
