mgk Goes Deep On New Album 'Lost Americana'

08-17-2025

Apple Music Radio broadcasted on Friday from the company's brand-new studio in Los Angeles, and mgk joined Travis Mills to discuss his brand new album "lost americana". We were sent some of the highlights from the conversation below:

mgk tells Apple Music about the positive reaction 'lost americana' has been getting: "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. Me and my best friends haven't made an album together in a couple of years-five, six years, or something like that. And it's like, we're back to better times."

Why he celebrated the release of 'lost americana' in the Midwest: "I'm putting the power back into the backbone of what is this country, which is the Midwest. The forgotten land. The independent record stores, the ones who support artists like us who are keeping physical things alive-tangible art. Local bars where people go to take their minds off the sh*tty day they're having. We could have gone 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.'"

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 own destiny: I said, 'In this film, I know there's no happy ending.' And I really didn't have a happy ending. I had a sh*tty following couple of years. This time, it was like, we're going to be begrudgingly honest, and I want to capture a simple theme, which is 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."

His mind-set during the album's genesis: "Even during the making of this album. I felt unwanted. I felt no demand for my presence anywhere, and I was just 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 wrote 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 f***in' rebel. I'm an outsider. I'm free, bro. I'm finally free."

How his music is inspired by hard times in 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.

Why Megan Fox has a writing credit 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 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, f*** it-she technically did some writing on this.' So that's why it says written by both her and I. 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 down to us from the stars.' The celestial seed line was from a night when we were mourning a miscarriage. We wrote a letter to, to our baby, and we burned it outside, and 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 of the house. We weren't outside. There's no way the seed could have got there. It was the most unexplainable miracle."

What he hopes people will say about him decades 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."

Tune in on Monday, August 18, at 9 AM PT on Apple Music 1 for more incredible interviews and artist hosted shows from Addison Rae, Kid Cudi, Eladio Carrion, Khalid, and more.