Earlier today, Machine Gun Kelly revealed the cover art to his upcoming album Mainstream Sellout. The artwork features Kelly playing the guitar as pink tomatoes are being hurled at him. Some, including Rolling Stone, believed that the artwork was quite similar to Japanese Breakfast’s 2021 album Jubilee thanks to the presence of spherical fruit. That project helped give the band, which is led by singer Michelle Zauner, two nominations at the upcoming Grammy Awards, one for Best Alternative Music Album and another for Best New Artist. The fuss over the Mainstream Sellout and Jubilee covers earned enough of a reaction to warrant a response from Zauner, who was quite nonchalant about the whole ordeal.
“I don’t actually think it looks anything like my album cover at all,” Zauner said to Pitchfork. This came after she joked about the matter being “2022’s feud of the year” in a tweet. She added, “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.” She added, “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.” Zauner called MGK’s pink tomatoes a “very contemporary Avril aesthetic,” adding, “Which, as much as I stan Avril, is an aesthetic I don’t really embrace for myself.”
Zauner continued, “I can’t imagine having rock beef with anyone, but if I had to choose, it would probably be Machine Gun Kelly.” She concluded her message with a nice dose of sarcasm. “I’m honored to have a celebrity feud published in Rolling Stone today, it was not something I had anticipated,” she said. “My manager actually was like, ‘I think you should lean into this. I think it’s so funny that I have to talk about it.’ I’m excited to see what clickbait you come up with. ‘Japanese Breakfast Slams Machine Gun Kelly!’”
You can check out the cover arts and see what the hubbub was about in the posts above.