"Emo Girl" Machine Gun Kelly

About

"Emo Girl" is a pop-punk song by rapper and musician Machine Gun Kelly featuring Willow Smith (WILLOW). The song, released in February 2022, was produced by Travis Barker, known best as the drummer for Blink-182. It was largely criticized by listeners as corny and generic upon debut, inspiring memes and TikTok videos expressing hate for the song. In March, Kanye West criticized a TikTok video set to the song by Kim Kardashian and their daughter North.

Origin

On February 4th, 2022, Machine Gun Kelly released the song "Emo Girl" featuring Will Smith's daughter Willow Smith.^[1] The song features lyrics about falling in love with an emo girl. On February 9th, MGK released a music video for the song on YouTube,^[2] gaining over 7.5 million views in a month (shown below).

Makeup by the mirror in her bedroom
Thigh-high fishnets and some black boots
Nose pierced with the cigarette perfume
Half dead but she still looks so cute (yeah)
She is a monster in disguise
And she knows all the words to the trap songs
Takes pics with a cherry-red lipstick
Says she only dates guys with a big (mmm)

I fell in love with an emo girl
I'm in love with an emo girl
I fell in love with an emo girl
All I want is an emo girl

Spread

On February 4th, 2022, Billboard^[4] praised "Emo Girl" as an example of MGK and WILLOW successfully rebranding themselves as the "leaders of the pop-punk revival," writing, "'Emo Girl' functions as a summit of artists hoisting up their rock cred in joyful unison." The song holds an average rating of 1.3/5 on Rate Your Music^[5] and an average user score of 23/100 on Album Of The Year.^[6] On February 5th, YouTuber Music Hangout posted a video from Anthony Fantano's Twitch stream reacting to the song, calling it "pure trash" (shown below).

The song became popularized on TikTok over the course of the month. Some of the most popular videos under the sound are critical of the song and show people dressed in stereotypical emo attire giving up their emo style because of the song, including uploads by TikTokers @superdeadrose and @clawed_beauty101 (shown below, left and right).

On February 17th, Instagram^[7][8] pages gothsdoingthings and arthouseshitposting posted critical image macros about the song, gaining over 11,800 likes and 5,700 likes respectively in a month (shown below, left and right).

On February 18th, TikToker @notfathermariyuh posted a video wearing exaggerated emo attire, dancing and lip dubbing to the song in a mocking way, gaining over 11.8 million views in a month (shown below, left). On February 27th, TikToker @itsoraida posted a similar video, gaining over 14.3 million views in two weeks (shown below, right).

On March 5th, Instagram^[9] user sc6ut posted an animated music video for the song using footage of Crimson from Total Drama Island, gaining over 37,300 views and 11,000 likes in a week (shown below).

Kim Kardashian And North West's "Emo Girl" TikTok

On March 9th, 2022, Kim Kardashian and her daughter North West, along with Kourtney Kardashian's daughter Penelope, posted a video to North and Kim's joint TikTok account @kimandnorth where they wear emo makeup and lip dup to "Emo Girl" (reupload shown below).

On March 13th, Kanye West posted a screenshot of the TikTok video to his Instagram page writing a caption about his disapproval of North being on TikTok (shown below, left). He also shared a screenshot of a text message from rapper The Game suggesting Kim is using North and TikTok to get under his skin (shown below, right). Both posts were deleted.

Kanye also posted a video (now deleted) airing out his issues with North being on TikTok, wearing full makeup and singing "Emo Girl," saying he should have had a say in the upload (reupload shown below). The "Emo Girl" video was deleted from the @kimandnorth page, assumedly by Kim following the backlash.^[3]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References