Right Before You Fall

Mac Miller “Circles”

There’s a lot of ways Mac Miller’s death at the age of 26 last year is heartbreaking and tragic, but the thing that stings the most if you didn’t actually know him is that he was just finding himself as a vocalist in the year or so before he died. Miller was singing more, and leaning in hard on the raspiness of his voice, and contrasting it with more elegant and organic sounds in collaboration with Jon Brion. In a song like “Circles,” which opens his new posthumous which he was working on with Brion at the time of his death, you can hear him confidently settling into a niche as a prematurely weathered man grappling with his demons and failures with a vocal style that communicated remarkable vulnerability and low-key pathos. In his voice and words you get a poignant mix of resignation to life’s difficulties – and the problems he created for himself – but also a glimmer of hope that he can move beyond all that if only he had some time to set things right and get back on track. Surely I don’t need to belabor the point of why hearing him sing a song expressing that mix of feelings is so heartbreaking to hear now.

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