If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then, color Michelle Zauner flattered. The Japanese Breakfast singer had a laugh about the non-troversy that briefly erupted on Monday (March 14) when Rolling Stone noted that the cover of Machine Gun Kelly‘s upcoming Mainstream Sellout album bears a noticeable resemblance to the cover of her 2021 Jubilee album.
“2022’s feud of the year,” she tweeted Monday afternoon with a link to the RS story on the allegedly matchy-matchy artwork. On the Breakfast cover, Zauner is surrounded by yellow persimmons hanging on strings all around her as she holds one up to her left eye. MGK’s depicts the rapper-turned-pop-punker strumming his guitar while a rain of pink tomatoes pour down around him and explode on the floor.
In an interview with Pitchfork on Monday, Zauner said she doesn’t see it. “I don’t actually think it looks anything like my album cover at all,” she said. “But I think it’s very funny that Rolling Stone put up an article about it just because there’s a circular fruit in the foreground. I mean his is people throwing tomatoes at him, and mine is persimmons peacefully hanging around me, so I think they’re very different concepts.”
As for MGK’s recent embrace of all-pink-everything aesthetic, Zauner also thought that was interesting, but not in her lane. “Yeah, it’s a very contemporary Avril [Lavigne] aesthetic, which, as much as I stan Avril, is an aesthetic I don’t really embrace for myself,” she told Pitchfork, adding that she doesn’t have beef with MGK and thinks that the notion that she does, or would, while enticing, is frankly hilarious. “I’ve never met Machine Gun Kelly. He seems like a fine person,” she added. “I can’t imagine having rock beef with anyone, but if I had to choose, it would probably be Machine Gun Kelly.”
While she joked that her manager said she should “lean into this” and that she couldn’t wait to see the clickbait headlines (see above), MGK replied that he had no stake in a beef either. “so should we beef over tomato’s or…should i thank them for introducing me to your album, because i just listened and i really like it,” he wrote.
He did, however, have a gentle nudge for the writer of the original RS piece, tweeting, “I hope this ‘journalist’ stretched before reaching this hard [crying laughing emoji] LMFAO.” MGK revealed the cover art and track listing for his upcoming album (March 25) on Sunday by wearing 16 different custom Dolce & Gabana shirts, sweaters and jackets bearing the song titles; the album will feature collaborations with Willow, Lil Wayne, Iann Dior, Young Thug, Gunna, Blackbear and Bring Me the Horizon.
Check out their tweets and MGK’s cover below.
so should we beef over tomato’s or…should i thank them for introducing me to your album, because i just listened and i really like it
— blonde don (@machinegunkelly) March 15, 2022
Machine Gun Kelly ‘mainstream sellout’