Reimagining a John Denver Classic: The Story Behind MGK and Jelly Roll’s “Lonely Road”

It’s been 53 years since the late great John Denver released his infamous track ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.” In half a century, the song has been covered countless times and remained in popularity. However, it has rarely been reimagined until now. Machine Gun Kelly and Jelly Roll have released their single “Lonely Road”, which plays on the music and lyrics of the Denver song.

The collaboration between the two seems as if it happened before, but that is not the case. A month or so before teasing the single, Jelly Roll and MGK performed together at CMA’s Spotify house. Leaving fans wondering why the two hadn’t yet collaborated. However, fans no longer need to guess.

Besides being an homage of sorts to Denver, the single also includes some other fascinating elements. Without further ado, let’s go behind the song.

Behind The Scenes Players

In addition to MGK and Roll, the track includes a star-studded cast of musicians. According to this video posted on MGK’s YouTube channel, Travis Barker appears to be the drummer on the track with The Costellows providing background vocals.

This interesting arrangement of differentiating players should surely make for a cross-genre pollination of mass proportions. Barker, the lead drummer of Blink 182, and The Costellows, an up-and-coming country trio, could not have more than polar opposite styles. Should be interesting to see how Roll and MGK use them.

“Lonely Road” Has Been Two Years in The Making

Per MGK’s Twitter account, the artist stated “I worked on ‘Lonely Road’ for two years, 8 different studios, 4 different countries and now Friday it finally drops.” Why this took MGK so long to release, who is to say?

Though, something to keep in mind about the long process, is that two years ago is when MGK released his last album, Mainstream Sellout. So, it might be fair to say that MGK has put a majority of his time in energy into ‘Lonely Roads’ both out of passion and in hopes of breaking into a new genre.

KellyRoll

Right of the bat MGK coined the term “KellyRoll,” as well as payed tribute to Denver writing, “Thanks to John Denver for paving the way. ” Stated previously, the two’s first collaboration prior to this was at CMA Fest’s Spotify House. And frankly, when fans saw them on stage together it seemed as if there relationship had deep-seated roots. Newsflash, it did.

There had been numerous posts of the two by Roll’s wife, Bunnie Xo, but the post that truly turned heads was by internet personality, Jesea Lea. The post aired back in May saying, “they’re working on something ‘southern fried.” Needless to say, but the release of “Lonely Roads” has founded a new celebrity partnership that fans never seemingly knew they wanted. Let’s see what it entails. It should be a good one.

See the post by Jesea Lea below:

(Photo via X/Twitter)