MGK admits he felt "unwanted" and "depressed" during creation of Lost Americana

Apple Music Radio broadcast live in recent days from the company’s new Los Angeles studio, where mgk sat down with Travis Mills.

mgk tells Apple Music about the positive reaction to Lost Americana
“Iron sharpens iron, so [it’s partially the result of] me being positive and not being so sunken in egoic depression from some mysterious validation I kept looking for. It feels like I cut the chains off my creative mind and my physical body. I feel lighter and more connected with my fans and my friends. My best friends and I haven’t made an album together in a couple of years, maybe five or six years. And it’s like, we’re back to better times.”

mgk tells Apple Music why he celebrated the release of Lost Americana in the Midwest
“I’m putting the power back into the backbone of what this country is, which is the Midwest. The forgotten land. The independent record stores, the ones that support artists like us, who are keeping physical things alive, tangible art. Local bars where people go to take their minds off a shitty day. We could have gone to the amphitheaters or the arenas or done some corporate version of a celebration. But we were like, ‘Dude, let’s go back to how it was.’”

mgk tells Apple Music what Lost Americana says about where he is now
“I think it requires a part two, for sure, the way I ended it. It’s funny on the last album, I wrote my destiny: I said, ‘In this film, I know there’s no happy ending.’ And I didn’t have a happy ending. I had a shitty following couple of years. This time, we’re going to be brutally honest, and I want to capture a simple theme: a car ride. I was reading one of Bob Dylan’s books, and he was saying that being on the road is so cool, because you’re not weighed down by anything, even bad news. You’re always moving. Leave it behind. This is like that.”

mgk tells Apple Music about his state of mind while creating the album
“Even during the making of this album. I felt unwanted. I felt no demand for my presence anywhere, and I was sitting in the house. I was like, ‘Guys, let’s hook up the instruments and make something.’ It reminded me of Tickets To My Downfall, which was a time in my life where I was like, ‘Everyone’s written me off...’... I was in there, just sitting there, like, ‘Damn, people are just so stoked to have any ammo to eat me alive.’ And I came out, and I felt free. I don’t think I’m meant to be this generic, industrial pop star that I keep getting led to. I’m a fuckin’ rebel. I’m an outsider. I’m free, bro. I’m finally free.”

mgk tells Apple Music how his music is tied to the most complex parts of his life
“That’s gotta stop, because I want to do a lot more albums, and I don’t want to hurt others around me. When you’re calling your daughter from a facility on Christmas and New Year’s, it’s a shameful moment. I can turn that grain of sand into a diamond, I guess, but we’ve gotta get out of that Van Gogh mentality."

mgk tells Apple Music why Megan Fox is credited on the closing track “orpheus”
“I wrote that by myself, but I took some of the love poetry, her love notes. She used to call me Orpheus, and there was a poem in her poetry book called ‘Prove It, Orpheus.’ There was this book we wrote to each other through the years of our relationship. I hadn’t cracked it open in a long time. There were a couple of [lines] that I took and put into the song, and I sang them, and I was like, ‘You know, fuck it, she technically did some writing on this.’ So that’s why it says written by both her and me. Her pen game is low-key untouchable. I cried the whole time doing that song.

“The first line of the song is, ‘We grew a tree back in the garden/ With a celestial seed that fell to us from the stars.’ The celestial seed line was from a night when we were mourning a miscarriage. We wrote a letter to our baby and burned it outside. The wind took it, and it spiraled into ashes. The ashes were dancing in front of us. We wept, and we held each other, and we went inside and meditated in front of a fireplace. But then we opened our eyes, and there was a seed inside the house in front of us. I put this on both my daughters, bro. There was a seed as big as the lenses of these glasses in front of us, inside the house. We weren’t outside. There’s no way the seed could have got there. It was the most unexplainable miracle.”

mgk tells Apple Music what he hopes people will say about him years from now
“Nothing. Nothing. I’m just a grain of sand amongst trillions of other energy particles floating around here. I’m just grateful to have been able to have some time here, to get to know some really nice people, raise two little girls who are going to grow up and be much better than I am, and mean a lot more to people than I do. If anything, I could be a mirror to others, to see in themselves what they should, which is confidence and acceptance that everything’s not going to be perfect. Maybe I can be a good example of being able to stay afloat while there are things trying to hold you down and pull you down. I don’t know, man. I hope they say nothing.”