Hi readers!
Some stories have to percolate and take time to emerge. The one this week is such a story. It’s about discovery but also grief.
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Everyone over 25 is a popular music contrarian.
Once you get to a certain age, you realize you’re not the target audience. Your only hope for a moving musical experience is a “back together” tour of your faves who are already on beta blockers. You’re grimly reminded to get your cholesterol checked.
Popular music speaks to the youth and young at heart. It’s a movement about creative freedom, falling in love, deepening understanding of life, and unadulterated fun. Once you’re outside the club scene and start turning down the radio on the work commute, there’s a loop of those reliable hits.
I was proud to say I didn’t listen to modern music. It was crap. Full of fluff and nothing like the deeply meaningful albums I spun in my college days. Eventually, I realized how much I was missing when I caught a song I liked. The Portlandia theme song called “Feel It All Around” by Washed Out was that song. I hadn’t heard anything like it and my callous millennial heart softened.
I told my brother about the song and he keenly suggested I listen to Trevor Something. What a ridiculous name... Perfect. I was loosening my grip on the sacredness of the late 90s. I wanted something new, something less cerebral. I had enough on my plate and didn’t need to work on the way to work.
I started a Pandora station from Trevor Something which thumped with a variety of synth wave and electronic artists. The music glided like hands over waves of pummeling air on a highway car ride. Smooth, unfettered joy.
One song that came up was “Feel Like Summer” by Childish Gambino. It had the unique distinction of being a banger with a message. I put it on loop while I sunbathed and bopped with my eyes closed. I was ready to follow where it would take me and started a new station, discovering another cache of artists. Through those open doors were more eclectic stylings that meandered through electronic to hip hop to more chill wave and even some R&B.
Among them was a a convergence of a few styles that were spinning, a charming rap song with synth and an old school R&B groove. I heard it a few times and didn’t remember to hit the thumbs up since I was often driving. When it popped up again, I saw the artist: Mac Miller.
Oh!
I was familiar with the name, just not the music. I had been out of the loop and missed his whole career. He was well connected, I found, collaborating with a variety of his peers over a catalog that included dozens of singles and mixtapes, and six studio albums. I also knew he passed away in 2018 and felt a twinge I could not place.
What is it to find someone after they’re gone? It might seem silly since the oldies we might love are from long-passed crooners or elderly people we mistake for dead anyway. They’re still alive?! we might exclaim. It has felt like something else entirely to step past the full life of a young man as if it were a misheard whisper.
Then I think of The FLARE and the idea that we send signals out into the atmosphere hoping someone will see them. I caught a glimpse of something in the pulsating snaps of an infectious beat, the pluck of an accompanying electric guitar, and I’ve turned around just in time to catch the horn section perk up. It was an echo in time that finally reached me.
Part of me thinks I’m singling Mac Miller out from a scene I was not apart of, viewing him out of context in relation to the chorus of artists at the time. Is he really that good or does he run with the pack? He is certainly elevated by his associates, of which he can count rappers Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt, bassist Thundercat, composer Jon Brion, and many others. But what I’ve been doing is examining his work in its own sphere and comparing each album to the last.
Even so, it’s not possible to know Mac in these relatively few hours of listening time. It takes years to digest someone’s artistry. You meet them in their first efforts, through style changes and as they explore more complex material. What I know about artists comes from a long relationship with their work and deep contemplation of it, not necessarily the number of listens. I’m from a generation that had unreliable lyric websites at best, so the cleverness of an artist’s wordplay or repeated themes had to sink in and I honestly prefer it that way. Year after year can be a new discovery and this is just the start.
As I thumb through the pages of Mac’s career, I see a progression of confidence and diversity of material, an ascension of artistry from Blue Slide Park to Circles. How he’s doing, he said, is in the music. How it can be interpreted, is yours to decide1. From his early days, his backing tracks bubble up over his shoulders until he has to stand on his toes to get his head above them. Later, his voice and flow rides much more comfortably on the beat.
The first track on his final album, Swimming, is radiant and ethereal. I felt my face soften and jaw go a bit slack, the way someone coming to a sudden realization might have a glimmer in their eyes. The album is the first fit of a tailored suit, with the cap of the shoulder sitting perfectly angled and the first button closing in mid weight wool that just barely hugs the chest. The straight cut inseam shows off the leg length while allowing comfort at the seat. In this album, Mac is grounded on each track, which are not just crafted, but orchestrated.
He is not the first to prophesy his death. Tragedy, doom, and inner struggle are common themes in rap music. Artists reflect on risky decision-making and lament their personal losses to violence or addiction. But to hear it in this context is eerie. Cole Cushna of Dissect podcast muses that the texts Mac says shouldn’t send on “Come Back to Earth” are perhaps the ones he sent to the suppliers who delivered his lethal cocktail, as revealed in the investigation2 surrounding his death. In the song “Brand Name” on GO:OD AM, he cautions his dealers against mixing additives in his products, lest he become a member of the infamous 27 club. Mac was 26 at the time of his death.
Is it morbid curiosity? Grief? I can’t peg the feeling of wonderment and sadness listening to the potential of a burgeoning artist. He had multiple albums and was finally there artistically, finally learning to use his voice as an instrument and delving into vulnerability by singing instead. His posthumously released companion to Swimming called Circles, is more R&B than hip hop.
What is there to do now? The end of his road is my beginning as I work backward and forward to piece things together. Mac Miller viewed each album as a lifetime and I guess the most anyone can hope for is to spin toward the infinite.
What’s next?
Comedy fiction
Reflections on world-building
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Vicki Newman. “Inside Mac Miller's tragic final days - drugs, prostitutes and sad messages to pals.” Mirror UK. 5 Sept 2019
Six Degrees of Musical Strings
I’m also a bit out of the loop with new music artists so thanks for the tips! I’ve never been attached to the music I listened when I was young. As a teenager I was so obsessed with Kurt Cobain (whom I also discovered post-mortem) that several girls in my entourage started to listen to Nirvana. Many years later when I met a couple of them, they were still listening to Nirvana and were bitterly disappointed that I had moved on. I don’t want to miss out on the new good stuff! But your article reminded me of Elliott Smith whom I discovered about 6 years after his death through his song Angeles… I think I had a similar feeling, it’s strange. I can still recall it after so many years.
This was excellent. Mac Miller was definitely a fixture of my sonic coming of age. ❤️