The Grounded Optimism in Mac Miller’s “Circles”

Through his art, Mac Miller showed us the work that goes into staying around, and we’re all better for it.

There’s a scene The Sandlot (1993) in which the ghost of baseball legend Babe Ruth visits young Benny Rodriguez in his bedroom. It’s a little terrifying at first: Benny’s room starts shaking and the sound of a cheering crowd rises up. Benny, who seems way too calm about the situation, asks nobody in particular, “Who’s there?” When the door opens in response, there is Babe Ruth; baseball bat slung over his shoulder, cigar hanging from his lips and a gem-like, auditory aura accompanying the entrance.

A cool part of this scene is that the Great Bambino first appears in fuzzy black-and-white before gaining full color, almost as though he was a figment of Benny’s imagination, and that imagination had only ever pictured The Babe in grayscale. What comes next is the ultimate lesson for our protagonist: Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. With that, Benny dons some new P.F. Flyers, hops the fence, grabs a baseball (signed by Babe Ruth, naturally) and becomes a local legend.

It’s a bonkers scene out of context, but I mention it because it is one of the few things I immediately thought of when I started listening to Mac Miller’s final album, Circles.

For the first 30 seconds or so of the album, all we hear is a sort of hazy mixture of keys, a soft cymbal and minimal guitar riff. It builds, but not to an apex. In the middle of the 11th instrumental bar, Miller’s voice arrives for the first time: all he says is, “Well,” but his delivery feels like he is arriving at the end of a long journey; one where scars may tell a truer story than words.

He goes on. “This is what it looks like / right before you fall,” reminding me of another inescapable fact: It’s impossible to listen to Circles and not consider that the project is posthumous. Producer Jon Brion, whom Miller collaborated with frequently before his passing, completed and released the project — which was supposed to be a companion album to Miller’s Grammy-nominated 2018 album Swimming — 15 months after Miller’s death.

On January 17, 2020, we received, to our knowledge, the final Mac Miller album. Circles steps in line with where Miller’s career seemed to be headed and is a portrait of the Mac Miller that was to come. Miller was funky; he was a John Lennon superfan; he genuinely adored and respected rap music and its past — this side of him peeked out in flashes on The Divine Feminine and in collaborations with The Internet. He moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles to New York City and back to LA, and it felt like he found his voice; a voice that showed he was capable of handling the ebbs and flows of life and could even thrive within those waves. But there wouldn’t be another peak or distant valley. Instead, Circles gave us a final dissertation, a tip of an iceberg with so much below the surface.

I’ve always felt a little behind when it comes to music. My best friend’s father was a bassist (upright and guitar), so funk music ruled their education. My dad was partial to old Hawaiian music and Luther Vandross, which wasn’t exactly the “cool” music to listen to with my friends. Luckily, my older brother blessed me with mixtapes featuring the likes of MURS and The Roots, thus jumpstarting my hip-hop education. I remember sitting in front of the TV, diligently taking notes while VH1 counted down their 100 greatest rap songs, secretly hoping it would earn me clout among my teammates on my high school basketball team.

Toward the end of my middle school years (circa 2008), MP3 players were a necessity on bus rides, spawning an obsession with curating playlists to fit onto a couple of available gigabytes. Songs needed to earn their place on the small drive, which turned pocket-sized music libraries into “Best of” compilations. Hours were spent digging through torrented files, praying a file wouldn’t crash the family computer.

Rap was in a bit of a weird spot as it grew into adulthood around the same time, a whole 30 years after Wonder Mike and the rest of The Sugarhill Gang introduced many to hip-hop in 1979 with the 15-minute classic, “Rapper’s Delight.” The genre wobbled through the 80s, taking its first shaky steps through the likes of Afrika Bambaataa, Rakim and Run DMC before N.W.A. crash-landed into culture at the close of the decade. N.W.A. ushered in gangsta rap, which would buoy the genre through the 1990s and into untethered space, just as the rise of the Internet and the dot-com bubble primed itself to flip the music industry on its head.

Later into the 2000s, Lil’ Wayne reached his mountaintop with Tha Carter III (2008), followed by No Ceilings (2009). His Young Money compatriot, Drake, was muscling his way into the scene with So Far Gone, practically made for Limewire kids mining the Internet for new music. It was the last era that existed before endless libraries would appear by way of Apple Music and Spotify. Around then, I kept seeing gif sets on Tumblr of a white dude with a snapback and backpack, smiling big through his rhymes.

I kept coming back to Mac Miller during impressionable times. His mixtape K.I.D.S. was catnip to my young ears, especially “Senior Skip Day” even though I had no plans to smoke weed and eat yogurt, but I appreciated the naivety known only to teenagers breaking free from high school. I could imagine the feeling of responsibility being lifted from my shoulders. Mac Miller felt like a good fit for me as I floated between high schools and across social circles. I found myself everywhere on good days, and nowhere on the worst. This aimlessness ignited my desire to learn about people’s passions so I could engage with them on any sort of social level.

For me, I was drawn to Miller for his non-seriousness. Intellectual music people didn’t pay much attention to the “frat rapper”, and the general disregard for Miller’s talent fueled my appreciation that much more. This was my guy. He was punk, and although I didn’t understand just what that meant yet … boy did I feel it.

As most things go as a teen, my endearment with Miller came and went. His first proper album Blue Slide Park, though commercially successful, kind of spawned a breakup of sorts. Its lackadaisical quality became something my frail fandom ultimately couldn’t defend, and there was just too much music to squeeze onto my pride and joy: a 128gb iPod Classic.

Essentially, I grew out of Mac Miller. Retrospectively, so did Mac Miller.

Midway through the 2010s, I entered my late-blooming emo phase. I realized that music could be much more than just a passive soundtrack to a car ride or a workout. Rather, it was the very water that could clear the way for my voice to escape my throat. If that sounds dramatic, that’s because it is. And yet, my own acceptance of emotional dramatics just made me appreciate the music more.

My influences had shifted from Tumblr posts to actual articles, and as I entered college, I focused my studies toward a career in sports journalism. I grew to appreciate Grantland (RIP), which I originally discovered through sports before quickly becoming enamored by their analysis of pop culture. One Grantland article in particular, Mac Miller Finds the Way, by Rembert Browne (then: an up-and-coming writer; now: one of the smartest writers alive) was especially impactful. Browne traveled to NYC as Miller moved into a Brooklyn apartment. They discussed relocating to New York, Miller’s addiction to lean, his upcoming GO:OD AM, and the overall untethered, floating feeling of being a Los Angeles transplant. The experience of reading this piece, even to this day, feels like the best-case scenario of catching up with a friend from high school who you figured you’d never speak to again. The one who is way more thoughtful and observant than you ever gave them credit for being, who you leave feeling a little ashamed of your own self-righteousness, yet motivated by the quality of human you now realize exists.

After Miller’s 2015 release, Watching Movies With The Sound Off, I checked in with Mac the way anyone in the 2010s would check-in with an old friend — occasional internet searches, infrequent deep dives into their social media — the kind of temperature checks reserved for the people you care about who aren’t part of your life. Watching him mature from afar made me feel a sense of pride to know how far he’d come. While his time in Los Angeles was troubling in spots, he also collaborated with artists who pushed him sonically like Anderson .Paak and Syd Bennett, and lyrically like Earl Sweatshirt and Schoolboy Q. His earnestness in the hard work garnered the love and respect of his peers’, evident from a famous tweet from Jay-Z, which Miller printed and hung up on his wall. Miller was a part of the in-crowd, a far cry from when he made waves as an independent artist in Pittsburgh, shuffling under Wiz Khalifa’s wing.

Divine Feminine was likely his most complete project to date, but it was overshadowed by a noisy breakup with Ariana Grande coupled with a DUI a few months later. When he came out with Swimming in 2018, the project seemed much closer to the artist he wanted to be. In his NPR Tiny Desk appearance, a mixture of strings, vocals, and uncontrollable laughter with Thundercat showed the charming Mac Miller to be much more than just a single-genre artist, but rather a hip-hop expert finally letting his funk influences take center-stage. Watching him giggle his way through a three-song set, losing himself in his music and performing with joy felt like I was watching someone who had finally come into their own… someone discovering comfort in their own art, perhaps for the first time yet.

In the family’s announcement of Circles, they said, “This is a complicated process that has no right answer. No clear path,” before announcing Jon Brion as the man tabbed to navigate the uncharted waters in order to finish the project.

Brion, a producer, composer, singer-songwriter whose touch on the last 40 years of music is undeniable, worked with the likes of Fiona Apple, Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Beyonce, as well as scored dozens of films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lady Bird. Brion and Miller met in 2018 and collaborated on Swimming and Circles before Miller’s passing. Miller planned to complete Circles after touring Swimming, and Brion would help Miller bring some of Miller’s thoughts to life as well as guide him in leaning all the way into the more soulful music he’d flirted with in the past.

In Jenkins’ follow-up interview with Brion, it’s hard to ignore the emotional pull; the feeling of something lost that we hadn’t yet discovered. Brion shared countless recording sessions in which he would make a comment about a song, and Miller’s response was regularly agreeable, but that he didn’t feel confident he knew how to make it happen. For me, it’s endearing to hear an artist lay his vulnerabilities out like that — to so strongly desire guiding lights around him. This was similar to how he immersed himself in improving his producing and lyrical skills, too.

Brion trudged along, adding most of what they’d worked on together, including a handful of songs that weren’t planned to be included. And while it’s obvious that we would all have loved if Miller had made those final choices, there’s something intriguing in having a close collaborator take the baton past the finish line. There’s a clarity afforded to someone who is not inside the artist’s brain, but who is instead listening. For Circles, it’s probably safe to assume Miller would’ve rerecorded a few different verses or riffed on ideas more, but that feeling of incompletion is unambiguously a part of this album, too.

Mac Miller’s openness about his struggles with addiction, depression and other mental health ailments made him much more than just a musical artist and is likely why fans resonated with him on a deeper level than other comparable musicians. That transparency allowed him the bandwidth to stretch his arms within his music, and Swimming felt like the mental state borne from fighting off your scariest demons. The cockiness that permeated though in K.I.D.S. and Best Day Ever evolved into a signature, tongue-in-cheek self-awareness, evident in tracks like Self-Care and What’s the Use.

The funny thing about depression (and by funny, I mean crippling), is the draining of self-confidence and motivation, and the subsequent spiral into a circus of self-doubt. On the flip side, there is a peace that comes with the understanding that bad days are bound to happen, and that low swings aren’t necessarily bad.

In a profile on Vulture reported shortly before his death, Miller told Craig Jenkins:

“I really wouldn’t want just happiness,” he says when I ask about how he manages hurt feelings and negativity. “And I don’t want just sadness either. I don’t want to be depressed. I want to be able to have good days and bad days … I can’t imagine not waking up sometimes and being like, ‘I don’t feel like doing shit.’ And then having days where you wake up and you feel on top of the world.”

When things are dark, believing life could ever be otherwise is an exhausting exercise in itself. But to find the understanding that the bad times will end — just like the good times always do — is less a resignation but instead, empowerment. It’s a reason to sit through the clouds. Mental illness steals the prospect of climbing back up, and it takes so much work to quiet those cognitive dissonances that can prey on you. The magic of Circles lives in understanding a fundamental truth: to have both good days and bad days is the most human experience you can hope for.

What Miller had going and what Brion finished felt like the work of a man at peace. Songs like Good News and the cover of Arthur Lee’s Everybody’s Gotta Live carry the weight that some may read into as weary survival or a plea for inner-peace — and while those notes are there — the entire project feels like it’s coming from somebody who is neither fighting nor conceding to the ebbs and flows of life. Rather, Miller often sounds battle-tested. Life’s shots had been fired and he stayed standing. In Circles, Miller portrays a casualness to his strength; it’s not apathy, and his music is a tinge more colorful than someone who wants to give up on the day.

When life throws you into a downward spiral, it’s almost impossible to see positive qualities about yourself. “If I was just better at x, then y would be better” is a flawed, but easy, trap to fall into. It requires effort and work to remember how to escape, often requiring another person’s hand to pick you up and out, to remind you that yes, you are worth the space you occupy. Circles is both a testament to where Mac Miller was going and where he had come as an artist. Sure, the project wasn’t finished when he passed, but to have someone else help Miller shine so brightly painted as clear of a picture of Mac as we could get.

Mac Miller’s listless, melodic flow works through a dreamy beat on Circles’ last track, Once A Day. It’s a song about surrendering, one that asks people to slow down a little bit … to lay off a little bit. At the midpoint, he wearily delivers advice that feels like the thesis of the two-album project:

“Don’t keep it all in your head
The only place that you know, nobody ever can see
You’re runnin’ low on regret, no tears that’s keeping you wet
I think you getting it now”

Miller was figuring it out, no matter how tiring the work. He settled into it enough to share his journey, one he no longer ran from but accepted both in his mind and in his art. In Circles, we are opened up to Miller’s process of wondering if any of this is worth it and guided to the conclusion that there is something appealing about staying through the ups and downs. That keeping your head above water is worth the effort. That swimming around in circles is better than drowning. That surviving the battle, and the battle in and of itself, offers value to anyone else who might be there to receive it.