WELCOME TO THE MACHINE

SOPHIE LLOYD DISCUSSES THE JOYS AND THE VERY PUBLIC PITFALLS OF HER WILD TRAJECTORY FROM POPULAR ONLINE CREATOR TO MACHINE GUN KELLY'S ARENA-ROCKING SECRET WEAPON

- JOE BOSSO

EVERYTHING WAS GOING SO WELL for Sophie Lloyd. The 27-year-old British guitarist had recently completed her first tours of the U.S. and Europe as part of rap rocker Machine Gun Kelly’s band. It was a heady time for Lloyd, who, despite her sizable following on YouTube and Instagram, had previously only played club and pub gigs around the U.K. before signing on for Kelly’s Mainstream Sellout tour in the spring of 2022. Now she was playing big-time venues — Madison Square Garden, Wembley Arena, even the odd stadium or two — and she was “going down a smash.”

And then it all seemed to go a bit wonky. In February of this year, Lloyd’s name was suddenly in headlines throughout the media, but for reasons that had nothing to do with her prodigious shredding skills. It all started when Kelly’s fiancée, actress Megan Fox, sparked online rumors of a split, which prompted one fan to write, “He probably got with Sophie” on Fox’s Instagram page. And that’s all it took. In a flash, Lloyd was clickbait fodder, with tabloid sites branding her “the other woman.” The speculation was quickly squashed by Lloyd’s management, and even Fox rushed to the guitarist’s defense, denying any kind of cheating scandal and writing on Instagram, “Sophie, you are insanely talented. Welcome to Hollywood. Your first unwarranted PR disaster.”

The brouhaha has since died down, and Lloyd can laugh about it now — somewhat. “It was a crazy time for me to be on the inside of all the media stuff,” she says. “Obviously, we all know the truth — it was complete bullshit — but it was wild to see this thing spread so fast and how everybody jumped on the bandwagon.”