FEATURE:
Revisiting...
Mac Miller - Swimming
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IN this feature…
I am looking back at albums from the past few years that are either not played as much as they should be, or they are worth reinvestigating. Whereas I re-evaluate an underrated album for Second Spin, this feature is a refresh of the great albums that were lauded at the time of release but are not discussed as much as they should. The late Mac Miller released Swimming in 2018. It gained mostly positive reviews and was the final album released during his life (he died in 2018; Circles was put out in 2020). Although critical reviews were stronger for Circles, Swimming is a phenomenal album that hinted at what could have been. It is a shame that we lost such a talent so young! I really love Swimming. It was my introduction to Mac Miller. It made it all the more heartbreaking when we learned of his premature death. Throughout Swimming, Miller’s break-up with Ariana Grande is documented. Rather than it being an attacking or negative album, there is a lot of realisation, self-love and recognition. Not just about his behaviour; the situation and loss was quite great. Critics noted how these themes were explored through his previous album, The Divine Feminine (2016). I really think we could have seen Miller growing as an artist and reaching a peak in years to come. One can hear so much promise and brilliance on Swimming. It is an album that newcomers can approach. One does not need to be affiliated and familiar with Miller’s work to appreciate Swimming.
Although there were a couple of mixed reviews and some positive ones (four-star) that hinted at some weaknesses, most of the reception for Miller’s 2018 album, Swimming, was positive. I remember when the album came out and hearing singles like Self Care. Not having heard too much about Miller’s music prior to that, I was compelled to explore more and dive into Swimming. In their review, NME wrote the following:
“Opening with the lilting ‘Come Back To Earth’, Miller dives straight into a bold new sonic stratosphere. All gorgeous layered vocals accompanied by trickling piano lines and gauzy synthesised sounds, it’s a world away from the frat rap of his earliest releases. Instead it borrows from the shimmering instrumentals of his previous record, combining them with trippy beats. This new sound is pushed even further in the following track ‘Hurt Feelings’, a brutally honest response to the controversy surrounding the rapper over the past months. “I’m always saying I won’t change, but I ain’t the same / Everything is different, I can’t complain” he lackadaisically raps over sultry beats and restrained backing vocals. It’s reserved and relaxed.
Yes, the album sometimes merely ambles. The sluggish ‘Small Worlds’ drags on and ‘Wings’ is a sleepy, stumbling block midway through the album. But Miller also soars here. ‘What’s the Use’ is a funk infused banger, and the string laden ‘2009’ is a triumph. And then there’s ‘Ladders’, a buoyant radio ready bop, which sees his bars skitter across glorious brass lines and earworm riffs.
‘Swimming’ isn’t what you would have expected from Miller when he first started dropping mixtapes over a decade ago, but that doesn’t matter. This album shows his growth as both an artist, and as aa person who’s had to deal with the most private aspects of their life being publicly dissected. It’s a stellar – if somewhat overlong – artistic statement”.
I am going to finish off in a bit. There is one other review that I want to highlight. The Guardian point out how Miller had grown between album releases - and how he has adapted his music to reflect some criticism that it faced in the past:
“It is not hard to imagine why Miller was in dire need of a reality check. Before he had turned 20, his first album, Blue Slide Park (2011), became the first independently distributed debut to top the Billboard charts since 1995. Clearly, popularity wasn’t a problem for the Pittsburgh native, but acclaim was a different story. Miller’s narratives didn’t venture far beyond the realm of dorm parties, and his fairly pejorative “frat rap” designation spoke not only to the demographics of his fanbase, but also to a much broader shift in hip-hop’s audience.
His marked creative improvement since then may have demonstrated an ability to learn from criticism, or maybe he just grew up; regardless, over the past five years, Miller’s music has become exponentially better, not to mention weirder. His rhymes got tighter and the beats trippier, often under his production alias, Larry Fisherman. He sang as much as he rapped on The Divine Feminine (2016), an intoxicating exploration of the ways we are transformed by love. He had never sounded more at ease with his place in the world – but, as he rapped a couple of years earlier, “the good times can be a trap”.
Swimming seems informed by a similar sentiment. Where The Divine Feminine probed the spaces between people, Swimming focuses on Miller. His fifth official album is an ambling 13-song journey towards self-acceptance, one that does not end in triumph. Instead, it embraces the possibility that he’ll never have it all figured out. And, mostly, Miller seems fine with that.
On the lead single, Self Care, co-written by Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, Miller’s loping sing-song sounds weary and unconvinced as he croaks, “Hell yeah, we gonna be all right” over watercolour synth washes. But halfway through, the beat switches to woozy space-funk, and light peeks through the clouds: “I got all the time in the world,” he proclaims. “Plus I know it’s a beautiful feeling, in oblivion.” He pulls at the word “oblivion” like chewing gum.
Swimming, as a whole, drifts by at the same leisurely pace – it is a patient record in sound and concept. Gentle orchestral arrangements occasionally forgo percussion, as on the swelling opener, Come Back to Earth, on which Miller elaborates on the album title: “I was drowning, now I’m swimming.” Those six words gesture towards an entire story, and Miller’s writing is at its best in this simple, suggestive mode. On Wings, a spacious neo-soul slow burner punctuated by the occasional sigh of a violin, Miller’s sung hook – “These are my wings” – feels all the more vast in its understatement.
Hints of The Divine Feminine’s warm mid-tempo funk surface throughout: What’s the Use glides along at a balmy stepper’s groove, and the standout track, Ladders, steadily climaxes into ecstatic horns – it’s the kind of song that could fill a wedding dancefloor. However, even the brightest moments on Swimming feel measured, informed less by outright happiness than by the lightness of being. Optimism coexists with regret and intoxication alternates with clarity: one moment Miller is radiating top-of-the-world confidence, and the next, he is accepting that the wise man knows that he knows nothing.
In other words, it’s an album that feels how getting older feels: relinquishing the ideal of perfection and learning how to live with yourself as you are. “Every day I wake up and breathe / I don’t have it all, but that’s all right with me,” Miller sings on 2009, accompanied by gorgeously sparse keys, delicate finger-snaps and the occasional downbeat clatter of snares.
There is no grand conclusion to be arrived at, no windfall of sudden self-actualisation. Instead, Swimming ends with a serene shrug: on So it Goes, over muted guitars and a spacey synth drone, Miller sings those three words like a mantra before being swallowed by a wall of sound. Somehow, it feels like a happy ending and an acceptance of whatever is to come”.
I will continue doing this Revisited…run for a couple of months more. There are some strong albums from 2018, 2019 and 2020 (and a few from this year) that I have been listening to where we do not hear much from them wider afield. Maybe Mac Miller’s Swimming is spun on some stations. The song and sound quality is such that it is broad and accessible. It is a shame if people missed this album because they assumed Miller was reserved for a particular audience or age demographic! Swimming is an album that ranks alongside the best of 2018. It is a reminder of the talent that the Pittsburgh-born rapper…
LEFT behind.