Hip-hop star turned pop-punk rocker Machine Gun Kelly has gone back to 1994 — he was just 4 years old at the time — to cover “A Girl Like You” in the trailer for the new Amazon series Paradise City. The tune was originally written and performed by Edwyn Collins, the Scottish post-punk and former Orange Juice frontman.
It’s another interesting move by MGK, whose punky Tickets To My Downfall, which he created with Blink-182 drummer/impresario Travis Barker, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard last year. The LP also served as the soundtrack to an accompanying short film, Downfalls High. Last June, MGK and Barker covered Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” during the protests.
Paradise City, which is described on IMDB as “the lives of a rock star who seems to have it all and a young rookie kid who idolizes him collide through their broken homes built by the music business,” does not feature Kelly in an acting role… yet. The show stars Fairuza Balk, Bella Thorne, Mark Boone Junior, Drea De Matteo and Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe.
In our Machine Gun Kelly cover story last November, he addressed the question of his musical shift to pop-punk. “It needed a face again. It needed someone to walk up in the camera and go ‘fuck you.”
In January, MGK made his Saturday Night Live debut.
Check the trailer for Paradise City below to hear Kelly’s slowed-down, near-industrial take on the tune.