When Machine Gun Kelly unveiled the cover of his upcoming album Mainstream Sellout yesterday (March 14), critics were fast to point out that the artwork bared resemblance to Japanese Breakfast's Jubilee (MGK's features pink tomatoes while JB uses persimmons).
The singer-songwriter jokingly tweeted that this was "2022’s feud of the year" before speaking to Pitchfork about creative boundaries.
“I don’t actually think it looks anything like my album cover at all,” she said, “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. 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.”
Addressing MGK's use of pink tomatoes, Michelle Zauner said: “Yeah, it’s a very contemporary Avril [Lavigne] aesthetic. Which, as much as I stan Avril, is an aesthetic I don’t really embrace for myself.”
She then quipped about what it would like to actually have beef with the rapper-pop-punker. “I’ve never met Machine Gun Kelly. He seems like a fine person,” she said. “I can’t imagine having rock beef with anyone, but if I had to choose, it would probably be Machine Gun Kelly.”
MGK responded to Zauner's tweet, admitting that the buzz introduced him to her album. "so should we beef over tomato’s or…should i thank them for introducing me to your album, because i just listened and i really like it," he wrote.
Check out both album covers below.