Maybe

Maybe: Machine Gun Kelly and Bring Me The Horizon's Unlikely Alliance

In the spring of 2022, two artists from very different corners of rock's landscape found themselves in the same sonic space with a shared ambition: to make something that hit hard enough for the mosh pit and wide enough for the streaming charts. The result was "Maybe", a collaboration between Machine Gun Kelly and Bring Me The Horizon that felt genuinely unpredictable rather than like a calculated marketing exercise. The combination was surprising; the song itself was not.

Two Different Trajectories

By 2022, Machine Gun Kelly had completed one of the more dramatic pivots in recent mainstream music history. The Cleveland rapper who had spent years in the hip-hop lane had, from 2020 onward, repositioned himself as a pop-punk figure, releasing records that embraced the genre's melodic directness and adolescent emotional vocabulary. The move was met with skepticism in some quarters and genuine commercial success in others; his album Tickets to My Downfall reached number one on the Billboard 200. Bring Me The Horizon, meanwhile, had been on their own evolution: a British metalcore band who had steadily broadened their sonic palette, incorporating electronic elements and pop structures into music that still had weight and intensity. By the time these two acts connected, their trajectories had been converging for years.

The Collaboration's Sound

The production on "Maybe" sits at the intersection of both artists' sensibilities: it has the melodic accessibility that MGK had been cultivating in his pop-punk era while incorporating the heavier production textures and Oli Sykes' distinctive vocal presence from BMTH. The result is something that works as both an alternative rock track and a pop song, which in 2022 was a commercially viable combination. Sykes' contribution gives the record a toughness that prevents it from tipping entirely into the bubblegum end of the pop-punk spectrum, and the interplay between the two vocal styles is one of the track's genuine pleasures.

Chart Impact

The collaboration made its presence felt on the Billboard Hot 100 quickly. It debuted on April 2, 2022, entering the chart at number 91. The following week brought a meaningful jump: it peaked at number 68 on April 9, 2022, and the song spent a total of two weeks on the chart. The brevity of the run reflects the competitive nature of the Hot 100 that spring rather than any lack of audience interest; alternative rock acts rarely sustain long chart residencies on a chart dominated by pop and hip-hop, and a debut in the top 100 followed by a move into the 60s is a genuinely respectable outcome for the genre.

Alternative Rock's Pop Moment

The year 2022 saw a genuine resurgence of interest in alternative rock and its adjacent genres among younger listeners, partly driven by the nostalgia cycle that was resurfacing 2000s emo and pop-punk aesthetics on social media platforms. MGK had been one of the key figures in making those sounds accessible again to a new generation, and his collaboration with BMTH connected that renewed interest with a band that had real credibility in the heavier end of the spectrum. The record existed at a genuine cultural junction.

What Lingers

Cross-genre collaborations often feel forced, as though the sum is less than the parts. "Maybe" works because both artists were genuinely operating in overlapping territory by the time it happened, rather than reaching across an unbridgeable stylistic gap for commercial reasons. Put it on and hear what two artists who were heading toward each other from opposite ends of rock's spectrum sounded like when they finally met in the middle. The fact that neither artist had to visibly compromise their core sensibility to make the collaboration work is part of what makes the result stick.

The collaboration also functioned as a bridge between two fanbases that had more in common than the genre labels suggested, drawing listeners who followed one artist into the catalog of the other and expanding both artists' reach in the process.

“Maybe” — Machine Gun Kelly & Bring Me The Horizon's singular moment on the 2020s charts.