These eight songs show Machine Gun Kelly moving between rap bravado, pop crossover, and pop-punk vulnerability. Their meanings are not all artist-confirmed: some have a public description or interview context, while others are best understood as readings of the song’s speaker and imagery. This is an editorial selection—not an official ranking of MGK’s most popular songs.
How to read the songs
A song can suggest a feeling without documenting an event in its artist’s life. The notes below separate what MGK or a label has said from interpretations grounded in the songs’ themes. The selection draws on recognizable tracks across several eras; the popularity ranking that includes some of them does not explain its method, so it cannot establish a definitive top eight.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
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| 1 |
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mainstream sellout | $17.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
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Tickets To My Downfall | $21.91 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
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Hotel Diablo | $15.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
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MACHINE GUN KELLY MAINSTREAM SELLOUT *BONUS TRACK* | $3.92 | Buy on Amazon |
| 5 |
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Machine Gun Kelly - Mainstream Sellout (Indie Exclusive Tour Edition) CD | $6.57 | Buy on Amazon |
1. “I Think I’m OKAY”: reassurance that sounds uncertain
The title offers reassurance, but the song’s anxious, self-questioning voice complicates it. It can be heard as someone trying to perform normalcy while acknowledging that something feels wrong. That tension—between insisting things are fine and sounding unsettled—is the song’s emotional center, rather than a confirmed account of MGK’s private life.
2. “Bad Things”: desire inside a risky relationship
“Bad Things” centers on attraction to a relationship the speaker understands as potentially destructive. The pull is partly the danger itself: desire persists even when the consequences seem troubling. This is a reading of the song’s romantic scenario, not proof that its narrator represents MGK or a specific relationship.
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- mainstream sellout (executive produced by Travis Barker) is mgk's 6th studio album, which includes multiple hit singles and landed him on the cover of Billboard
3. “Bloody Valentine”: seductive romance in a Hollywood setting
Universal Music Canada described “Bloody Valentine,” the first release from Tickets to My Downfall, as a “complex and seductive love story.” The label’s May 2020 announcement supplies that framing. Kerrang offers a different emphasis, reading the track as an ode to Hollywood’s Sunset Strip rather than a conventional love song. Taken together, the descriptions suggest a song that blends romantic fixation with the glamour and danger of a stylized Hollywood scene.
The song also marked a turning point in MGK’s pop-punk shift. NME’s 2020 interview reports that recording it convinced him he was on the right path; Kerrang’s account of the era places it within a larger transition. In a separate 2020 interview, MGK described a culture of isolation and separation when discussing love, but that comment is context for his outlook—not a definitive explanation of this track’s lyrics.
Rank #2
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4. “my ex’s best friend”: comfort tangled up with loyalty
Universal Music Canada describes the song as a messy entanglement with an ex’s closest confidant, where the narrator finds comfort and love in that connection. That premise gives the song its conflict: desire offers intimacy, but it is inseparable from breakup history and divided loyalties. The label’s August 2020 announcement also reported more than 100 million global streams for the video at that time; that is a historical figure, not a current total.
5. “Glass House”: distress behind a public persona
“Glass House” can be read as a public-facing confession about psychological pain and the pressure of concealing distress behind a persona. Its vulnerability complicates the swagger often associated with MGK’s rap-era image. The song’s emotional language should not be treated as a clinical diagnosis or as verification of particular events in the artist’s life.
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- Machine Gun Kelly (EST 19XX/Bad Boy/Interscope Records) has just released his highly anticipated fourth studio album, Hotel Diablo
6. “Rap Devil”: a confrontation shaped by its feud
“Rap Devil” is a diss track, so its meaning rests on the public confrontation as much as on its punchlines and boasts. Listening only for individual claims risks mistaking a deliberately combative performance for verified fact. The more useful lens is how the track uses direct address, provocation, and competitive bravado to make the feud itself the subject.
7. “Wild Boy”: rowdy self-branding
“Wild Boy” presents a brash, unruly character that fits the song’s high-energy rap persona. It can be understood as performance and self-branding from an earlier phase of MGK’s career, rather than a complete portrait of his private self. Heard alongside the later, more vulnerable tracks here, its excess reads as one mode in a deliberately varied catalog.
Rank #4
- BONUS TRACK: "LOVE RACE" featuring KELLIN QUINN
8. “Papercuts”: celebrity spectacle and self-criticism
“Papercuts” sets celebrity imagery against a more vulnerable, self-critical perspective. That contrast invites a reading of fame as spectacle that does not erase a person’s doubts or discomfort. The song’s meaning is best kept at that level: the tension between public image and inward unease, not a claim that every image or feeling records a specific biographical event.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the eight songs show together
The songs move from “Wild Boy” and “Rap Devil”’s outward-facing bravado to the uneasy intimacy of “Bad Things,” “Bloody Valentine,” and “my ex’s best friend,” then toward the more exposed voices of “I Think I’m OKAY,” “Glass House,” and “Papercuts.” Their variety matters: a lyric may be a character, an exaggerated performance, or an expression of a broader feeling. MGK has said he writes his own songs, but that alone does not make every narrator autobiographical. In a 2019 WIRED interview, he also declined to identify who “The Break Up” was about, explaining that they remained friends; the boundary is a reminder not to turn ambiguity into speculation.
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