Machine Gun Kelly is thinking big — torch-in-the-sky big. The GRAMMY-nominated artist, who’s leaned fully into his pop-punk second act over the past half decade, has dropped the official video for “starman,” a fist-pumping highlight from his 2025 album lost americana.
Directed by Sam Cahill, the clip folds in footage from mgk’s ongoing Lost Americana Tour, built around a towering Statue of Liberty stage prop that feels less like set design and more like thesis statement. The visual toggles between arena-scale spectacle and tighter performance shots, underscoring the song’s push-pull between escapism and self-exposure.
“starman” flips the sugar rush of Third Eye Blind’s 1997 hit “Semi-Charmed Life” into something more existential — a recontextualized chorus that swaps carefree irony for millennial burnout. The track was written and produced alongside longtime collaborator Travis Barker, who also handles drums, plus SlimXX, BazeXX, Nick Long, and No Love For The Middle Child. Sonically, it’s a rush of new-wave sheen, pop-punk velocity, and arena-rock catharsis engineered for mass sing-alongs.
The video arrives as the Lost Americana Tour barrels ahead. After a winter pause, the trek resumed in Europe and returns to the U.S. May 15 in Wheatland, California, before wrapping July 1 in Ridgefield, Washington — another victory lap for an album that debuted Top Five on the Billboard 200 and marked mgk’s third straight No. 1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart. Tickets to the tour can be found here.
Earlier this year, mgk revisited his breakthrough era with Tickets to My Downfall (All Access), an anniversary edition executive produced by Barker that unlocked five previously unreleased tracks from the vault. He also dropped “times of my life,” a reflective outtake dating back to the original Tickets sessions — a reminder that the pivot from rap provocateur to pop-punk revivalist wasn’t a stunt, but a recalibration.
If lost americana was about chasing a myth of freedom, “starman” plants its flag squarely in the contradictions — bright lights, big stages, and the uneasy feeling that you’re still trying to outrun something once the amplifiers cool.
