NEED TO KNOW
MGK is opening up like never before on his new album Lost Americana.
The genre-bending singer-songwriter lets his lyrics do the talking on the new record, which seemingly covers everything from his on-again, off-again relationship with former fiancée Megan Fox to his role as Dad to daughters Saga, 4 months, and Casie, 16.
“Vulnerability is how I was able to hold on to the fan base I’ve had for so many years,” MGK (previously known as Machine Gun Kelly, and born Colson Baker) told PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “The human behind the music has to show them the human side… Maybe this time, [my haters] will get to know the man-slash-broken-boy behind the moniker MGK.”
He showcases that vulnerability on the new song “Treading Water,” in which he laments disappointing his children and compares himself to his father, who died in 2020.
“I broke this home, and just like my father/I’ll die all alone,” he sings, later saying, “I’m lookin’ at the kids’ faces/Sittin’ in the driveway while I pack up suitcases/I just ruined their holiday/And lies don’t die, they grow/And everything you try to hide eventually shows.”
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MGK, 35, goes on to sing about a relationship that he struggled to end, and wanting to be better for his daughter, likely referring to Fox, 39, and and Saga, who was born in March: “The beast killed the beauty/The last petal fell from the rose/And I loved you truly/That’s why it’s hard to let it go/I broke this home, but I’ll change for our daughter/So she’s not alone.”
In the bridge of the song, MGK reveals he spent Christmas in a rehab facility, and seemingly addresses tabloid rumors about his relationship with Fox. The two were engaged in January 2022, but called it quits in the fall of 2024, shortly after Fox announced her pregnancy.
“It’s a complicated relationship, that’s nobody’s business/But I’m in this business, face it/I’ve been hiding from the ideation/That the public has been ruinin’ my reputation,” he sings.
MGK later pleads with the media to “just keep our baby out this situation.”
On the song “Can’t Stay Here,” the musician sings about drowning his sorrows at a bar, and the pain of coming home to an empty house, hoping his partner will call.
“5 a.m., no one’s home, is this my fault?/Sleep with my phone on loud, hoping you’ll call/But it’s silent, why can’t I accept that you won’t?/Let me let this go,” he sings.
MGK closes out Lost Americana with “Orpheus,” a song he co-wrote with Fox. The piano-driven ballad references the Greek myth about the musician, prophet and poet Orpheus, who traveled into the underworld in a doomed attempt to rescue his beloved wife Eurydice.
The song begins with MGK singing about growing a tree in their garden with a “celestial seed that fell down to us from the stars.” When Saga was born in March, the couple announced her birth by calling her a “little celestial seed.”
As the song continues, he sings about his dedication to his partner: “Eurydice died from a viper/The girl Orpheus knew he’d die for/Go to the underworld and fight for/’Cause life’s just death if I don’t have you/So I’ll find Hell to be trapped into/To get back to you.”
“I will love you for all my days,” he sings. “Somewhere in a different realm, we’re still together/Somehow, I’ll find my way to you again/Shipwrecked, but I hold hopes of buried treasure…. And gravity’s pull was never stronger/Than my soul’s cord attached to you/I’m lost, but my heart’s got the map to you.”
Despite the song’s sweet nature, it ends on a sad note, with MGK revealing that the story is actually a tragedy, and not a love story.
“Do you remember when you mistakenly/Thought that I could make you happy?” he sings. “I wish that we could still dream and dream/I won’t let you love me, but I can’t let you leave me/It’s a tragedy and we’ve all seen that scene.”
MGK opened up to PEOPLE in this week’s issue about shrugging off his critics, saying he felt as though he’d become hated for “no reason… just because I artistically express myself, through fashion, music, whatever — because I choose to not stay contained into a societal box.”
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During an appearance on the Today show on Aug. 7, MGK gave all the credit for raising Saga to Fox.
“It’s awesome. I want to detract all of the congrats to me and just move it to Megan because she really does all the work. I keep getting called ‘The Music Teacher,’ ” he said. “Someone the other day was like, ‘You’re such a good dad!’ Just because I was holding the baby. And she was fuming, like, ‘No, no, no, no.’ She’s the one. I just play the guitar and pray that the baby is happy.”
