Our Power Hitters feature turns the spotlight on the brilliant songwriters and producers behind the biggest smashes in the biz, the players who regularly step up to the plate and deliver a hit—and frequently drive it clear out of the park.

With the return to the charts of emo-rap and pop-punk, guitarist/songwriter and Warped Tour veteran Nick Long has taken on a hitmaking role as one of the core members of Machine Gun Kelly’s creative unit. Alongside Travis Barker, he has been an essential contributor to MGK's sonic transition from rapper to alt-rock chart-topper.

Long enjoys songwriting credit on 13 of the 15 tracks (every song that’s not an interlude) on MGK’s platinum #1 album, Tickets to My Downfall (Bad Boy/Interscope). Lead single “my ex’s best friend” has more than 2.8m in total activity and is still hovering in the Spotify U.S. Top 50 a year after its release. For their first collaboration, Long, Barker and MGK created "I Think I’m Okay” f/YUNGBLUD, the standout track from 2019’s Hotel Diablo. It saw Kelly leaning into the alt-rock sound he’s now famous for.

The trio is running it back with their winning formula, as evidenced by “papercuts,” the first track from MGK’s forthcoming album, Born With Horns (executive-produced by Barker), which dropped last Friday. Long, Barker’s most trusted assist man of late, is expected to be a co-writer on the majority of that project as well.

Long struck gold in his early days when, upon segueing from artist to songwriter, he joined a 2015 writing session for developing act BØRNS. The song “Electric Love” resulted from that session. While not an immediate smash, it earned its due as a hit single in 2020 thanks to TikTok and was revived by Gen-Z. "Electric Love" has resided in Spotify’s Top 200 (U.S.) since August 2020 and is now north of 4m in total activity. Long also co-penned King Princess’ breakthrough song, “1950.”

Also in conjunction with Barker, Long has credits with Trippie Redd, LILHUDDY, KennyHoopla and more. Lend an ear below to his resume, which includes co-writes with Bebe Rexha, All Time Low, French Montana, Fitz & the Tantrums and Papa Roach, among others.

Long is repped by Jaime Zeluck Hindlin and Christina Koblick at Nonstop, with Emily Bines at Kobalt handling publishing.

Photo by Scott León