The pop-punk music gods are shining down upon us this week: after months of anticipation, Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith’s “Emo Girl” music video has finally arrived. The artists teamed up on a single about their mutual love for — yep, you guessed it — emo girls, and watching them belt out the lyrics together makes us want to chant the chorus from a rooftop. The video kicks off with a cameo from MGK’s close pal Travis Barker, who portrays a school teacher guiding young students through a museum field trip. As the kids watch footage of Smith and MGK performing in various settings, their outfits and makeup turn progressively more, well, emo until they’re sporting black lipstick, fishnets, and fake tattoos at the field trip’s conclusion.
“Emo Girl” features a subtle though undeniable tribute to MGK’s fiancée, Megan Fox — the intro line is a sample of the starlet saying, “I am a god,” in her hit 2009 film “Jennifer’s Body.” Although MGK and Barker originally wrote Smith’s verse for her, she wound up rewriting it in order to stay more true to her voice. “She puts eyeliner on her dark skin, she tells me lies but she knows all of my secrets,” Smith sings before joining MGK for several consecutive “I fell in love with an emo girl” chants.
Speaking to Barker about “Emo Girl” for a “Rolling Stone” feature in November 2021, Smith said, “To be a Black woman and be able to come on that song and write my verse with my outlook on life — just being able to be authentically me on that song — those are the kinds of things that are going to make more people feel seen. That’s the most beautiful part of music.” The 21-year-old artist is blazing a path of her own in the pop-punk genre, collaborating with Avril Lavigne on “Grow” last year and with Barker and Blink-182 on “Transparent Soul” a few months prior. We can’t wait to see who she joins forces with next.