Meet Justin Lyons

Some people get a nickname. Justin Lyons got Guitar Slayer.
And when your career has taken you from playing music in church to touring the world with artists across K-pop, R&B, hip-hop and rock, you’ve probably earned it.

Justin Lyons by Anna Muradás at the Lost Americana Tour in Berlin, Germany in 2026.

Justin “Guitar Slayer” Lyons is a guitarist, musical director, producer and touring musician whose résumé is basically proof that a great player doesn’t have to belong to just one genre.

His relationship with music started ridiculously early. Justin received his first guitar when he was around five years old and, by eleven, he was already serving as a music director at his local church. As a teenager, he was even offered an opportunity to play bass with the Mississippi Mass Choir, although his mother ultimately decided he was still too young to take it on. That church background became the foundation for everything that came later.

After high school, Justin studied music and the music business at Mountain View and Cedar Valley Colleges, while continuing to develop as a largely self-taught guitarist.

Before becoming closely associated with K-pop, Justin toured with R&B singer Vivian Green. His career then took a major turn when musical director Gil Smith recommended him to YG Entertainment while BIGBANG were looking for musicians for their world tour.

Justin became a touring guitarist for BIGBANG, eventually working within the wider YG universe with artists including G-Dragon and, later, BLACKPINK. For anyone who has watched a major K-pop show, that job is much bigger than standing at the side of the stage and playing the chords exactly like the record.

Live bands are often responsible for making songs feel heavier, bigger and more physical in an arena. Electronic production gets translated into live instrumentation, arrangements change, transitions stretch out, and familiar tracks suddenly have an entirely different energy. Justin became part of that translation.

And his touring résumé kept expanding far beyond K-pop.

Over the years, he has performed with artists including New Edition, Lil Wayne and Toni Braxton, moving between genres that require completely different instincts from the person holding the guitar. That adaptability might be one of the most interesting things about his career.

A guitarist accompanying an R&B vocalist needs to understand space. A K-pop stadium show demands precision and scale. A rock set asks for something completely different again. Justin can move between all of them without losing the personality in his playing.

He has session credits too. On Carmen Rodgers’ 2015 album Stargazer, for example, Justin is credited on guitar for Beyond the Stage. More recently, his connection with Tony Williams has included the track and video UBUBU, where he is featured outright as Justin “Guitar Slayer” Lyons.

Because somewhere between being the musician behind other artists and building his own identity, Guitar Slayer became more than a nickname. It became the brand.

Justin has talked about wanting audiences to know the musician behind it too. As early as 2016, he was developing a solo project called Superego, imagining music that could combine his guitar playing with another obsession of his: orchestral strings. Which makes sense when you listen to the way he approaches the instrument.

And then another audience got to know him.

Justin became part of mgk’s touring world, performing alongside the band during the Mainstream Sellout era, and is still with them to this day. He appears in Mainstream Sellout Live From Cleveland: The Pink Era, the concert film by Sam Cahill documenting mgk’s massive hometown stadium show and the world tour surrounding it. It put him inside yet another completely different musical environment: distorted guitars, pop-punk energy, hip-hop roots and a live show built around unpredictability.

Behind some of the biggest artists in the world are musicians who have to understand much more than their instrument. They need to read an artist, understand an audience, adapt to a completely new musical language and still somehow sound like themselves. Justin has been doing that for years.

From church stages to BIGBANG and BLACKPINK stadium shows, from R&B sessions to standing onstage with mgk, his career is a reminder that some of the most travelled people in music aren't necessarily the names written across the marquee.

Sometimes they're standing a few feet behind them with a guitar, and in this case, slaying them.

Follow Justin Lyons on Instagram.