Machine Gun Kelly brought his Mainstream Sellout Tour to the Oakland Arena with helicopters, fireworks, flames, and so much more.
Opening for Machine Gun Kelly was Avril Lavigne. When Avril hit the stage, it felt like everyone was transported back to the early 2000s and nobody was complaining. She kicked off her set with a classic “Girlfriend” and followed that up with “Bite Me,” a song from her most recent album Love Sux. During her set, she just kept performing hit after hit such as “What the Hell,” “Complicated,” and “My Happy Ending” all in a row. She ended her short set with the megahits “Sk8er Boi” and “I’m With You,” both from her 2002 debut album, Let Go. Lavigne recently marked the 20th anniversary of this album by recreating the cover photo on the streets of New York when the tour stopped there earlier in the month.
It was a shame that Lavigne’s set was so brief, but luckily that wasn’t the last we’d see of Avril for the evening as she joined MGK on stage during his set to perform their song, “Bois Lie.”
Machine Gun Kelly certainly knows how to make a dramatic entrance! He appeared dangling from a helicopter, hanging over the crowd as it made its way from the back of the arena to the stage while he performed “Born With Horns.” As he made it to the stage, he picked up his guitar and performed “God Save Me” and “Maybe,” both of which songs had crazy guitar solos that everyone on stage gave their all for. MGK was constantly moving around and was even running around in the crowd during “Drug Dealer.”
MGK also had some joints that were propped up in his unique hand’s microphone stand that he lit up through the night. He mentioned how much he loves Northern California mostly because they have the best weed. The crowd seemed to agree with him.
The legendary Avril Lavigne and Willow, who are opening acts on the tour, also came out and performed collabs with MGK, which was a nice treat to see them back on the stage after their sets.
MGK also performed some songs like “more than life” from the deluxe album he just dropped which the tour is named after. To go along with the crazy helicopter idea, MGK also had tonnes of fire, smoke, and fireworks that went off during his set. Also during his song “FLOOR 13,” he was on a riser in the middle of the stage that saw his raised several feet into the air.
A big theme for the show was the presence of the internet and a lot of the bad things people have said about MGK on it. But he talked about how people on the internet don’t really know you and you shouldn’t believe what it tells you to think about yourself or how you should look/act. It was because of this mindset that he wrote his song “title track,” the first song from his 2020 album Tickets To My Downfall.
Towards the end of his set, MGK briefly slowed things down for a bit and performed acoustic versions of “jawbreaker” and “why are you here,” showing that he can do more than just rock n roll. To end out his 26 songs and 2 Hour and 40-minute set, Machine Gun Kelly performed “twin flame” with a crazy amount of fire and fireworks going off everywhere.
This show was around the halfway mark of the tour which has pretty much become the tour of the summer. The name of the tour is true, every show is actually sold-out. So if you have the chance, you don’t want to miss this tour, especially since so far MGK has brought a lot of amazing guests out and you never know who he will bring for your show.
