Following his performance on the American Music Awards, Machine Gun Kelly announced that he is releasing a “first if it’s kind musical film experience” in the form of a musical. The film will be narrated by the “Bloody Valentine” singer and blink-182’s drummer Travis Barker. The musical will be called ‘Downfalls High’ and will be released in January 2021.
In a recent interview on Spotify’s Rock This with Allison Hagendorf, the “Bloody Valentine” singer revealed that he and Modsun were joking around when they came up with the idea of creating a musical film of the No. 1 album after watching Grease 2 because of a thumbnail they seen online.
“We should turn Tickets To My Downfall into like Grease,” Modsun said. “We should make a punk rock Grease. Well, pop punk Grease”
MGK describes the upcoming film saying, “It’s essentially 14 music videos we’ve woven in between our narrative of this boy whose name is Phoenix.”
He continued to explain how the film came to be, saying he called his record label, Interscope Records, to ask for a budget to be able to create the film, then upon receiving the money for the project, he began filming and editing it himself with Modsun and Barker.
“I called my label with this like extremely frantic confidence, I was like, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to direct it. It’s going to be this, it’s going to be about this and I need the money and I’m going to do it next week. And they gave me the money,” he explained. “This is like after we shot the whole thing in a week and we had been editing it. And also too, of course, on the phone call, I’m like, it’s me. Like, you know, I’m like the editing king. I’m going to edit this. It’ll be done in four days. I shot it in four days. But I’m also like, I’ll edit it. I’ll have it to you in a week.”
He continued: “Four weeks passed. And the label I think was just like, wait a minute, remember when we gave Machine Gun Kelly, like all this money to shoot this fucking musical that he just like, convinced us was like going to happen and work? Like, why did we do that? Like, he hasn’t showed us anything, like what the fuck were we thinking? Like and they called me and they were like, yo, what the f-ck did you do with all of our money, man? Like, where is it?”
Explaining more about the film, the singer said “me and Travis are the narrators, you know what I mean, via the songs on Tickets To My Downfall and it all goes in order and like, it’s just something sick that people can enjoy. And I know for a fact every label after it comes out is going to look at their artists and going to go, OK, this next album, like you need to come with, like a movie with the album, like you need to do that.”
Machine Gun Kelly thinks that this project is going to change the format of what and how other artists are going to do with their albums and he think it will make albums cool again.
“I know it’s going to change the landscape of what and how artists are going to view their albums and it’s going to make albums cool again, dude,” he added. “When the fuck was the last time you really sat down and were like, all right, great. Like here’s multiple artists coming out with multiple albums and I actually care to listen to all of them front to back. I think that this will make people be like, dude, if it’s not like playable from front to back and we can’t, like, essentially write a movie to this shit, like you know we need to go back and rework it, rework it, and rework it, because I can listen to, like, certain albums and be like, whoa, dude, that should have a movie like that should.”
Listen to the full podcast with him below.
‘Downfalls High’ is soundtracked by Machine Gun Kelly’s latest chart-topping album, Tickets To My Downfall.
The filming is complete and it is set to be released in January 2021.
