Didn’t think anybody died on a Friday
A new Mac Miller album dropped last month, seven years after he died of an accidental fentanyl overdose. What we know about why Balloonerism ever existed, and why it especially exists now all of a sudden, is a confusing thread of ideas gleaned from public statements, and second-hand recountings of forum threads of discreditable sources, by discreditable sources.
With all due adulation to seedy webpage archive tools, and the music nerds of Reddit, let’s give it our best shot.
In 2020, a user under the tag FISHALIEN identified themselves as being in some way close to Mac Miller, and began to leak a series of tracks purportedly from an unheard album of Mac’s to a prominent, now offline leak forum. From peeking at the metadata, the name of this lost album was learnt to be Balloonerism. Created in a week-long flurry around 2014, the project was ultimately shelved, with a couple tracks finding their way over to Faces.
OK. Album made in a rush in 2014. Shelved, bits taken to the next album, never mentioned again. Taking a critical look at the facts, can we get a sure answer on if Mac wanted this album to ever come out?
In their announcement of the album’s official release, the estate of Mac Miller was clear in stating that he had “commissioned artwork for it, and discussions concerning when it should be released were had regularly, though ultimately GO:OD AM and subsequent albums ended up taking precedence”.
To be clear, there is no reason to doubt that Mac discussed this with members of his estate. The extent of these talks did not appear to reach his regular engineer and eventual Balloonerism mixer, E. Dan of ID Labs, who in a now-deleted Reddit comment said “He did indeed move on from it, took a few of the songs for Faces and never got back to it”.
Neither did it seem to reach his label Warner Music Group. When reached out for comment, I was referred to Mac’s publicist: “The discussions about releasing Balloonerism started prior to Mac’s business relationship with Warner. No timeline for the project’s release was ever settled on prior to his passing, though his original intention was to have this closely follow Faces”.
Well, that makes it sound far more like Mac had done-and-dusted shelved this. But remember that bit about Mac commissioning artwork for the album? Less than a month before his death, Mac commented “Need this” on a painting by future Balloonerism cover artist Alim Smith, and you might recognise the painting’s style from somewhere.
The day after Mac’s death, Smith posted the painting which would one day be Balloonerism’s album’s cover, making it as clear as “he asked me to paint him as a balloon going up in the sky”.
OK so Mac was thinking about releasing the album again, since he had just commissioned the artwork. Wait no, that’s more confusing now! The announcement statement said that Mac had commissioned artwork, but that ultimately GO:OD AM took precedence. GO:OD AM came about in 2015, and the final artwork we know can’t have existed prior to 2018.
This timeline is now far more murky now, and difficult to make true sense of. But still not unexplainable: Maybe Mac commissioned different artwork for the album before shelving it? And maybe he was gearing up for putting out the album, and got the new artwork we knew commissioned as a replacement?
Let’s pump the brakes a sec and figure out if any of this actually matters. The album was leaked! The choice about if this album exists in the public was taken out of the hands of the Mac Miller Estate. There is no arguing with them preferring an official, polished release being put out.
Completely reasonable enough! But is it enough?
To no fault of their own, the Mac Miller Estate’s statement focuses on the letter of Mac’s intentions on the release of Balloonerism, because they kind of just do have to, right. Audiences have soured on seeing their favourite artists’ work exploited for years after their deaths. Avoiding that slant could well be what’s led to this over-correction in messaging, even if the clear underlining of the facts has, in this case, drawn attention to just how confusing those facts are.
And personally, yes I think respecting the dead’s wishes for their art is important, no I do not think acting on someone’s wishes to the exact letter is important, because that is impossible. Knowing each other’s artistic intentions to contract lawyer detail is an unreasonable standard to have while we are all alive, no matter how close we are, until such a time that our brains become USB-C compatible.
Is it the audience demanding too much? Are statements like these what’s pushing that standard forward? A yes to both to an extent, but neither is the patient zero here. It’s the many other instances of clear posthumous exploitation which has shocked the broader music culture again and again, until the senses are dulled to cynicism. I’ve noted the trappings of these releases here before, but the Mac Miller Estate honestly seem to be amongst the best-intentioned. The best-intentioned are still left to navigate the undercurrent paranoia about if our grief for the artists we love is being used against us once more, as it will continue to be.
So, with all of that, did Mac Miller want us to hear Balloonerism? This album was first brought into public consciousness with major questions hanging around that idea, and answers afterwards do not, and in likelihood can never fully address these uncertain foundations. Who really was this leaker? Why was the leak the first time we heard about this album Mac always wanted out?
Talking around death had certainly tricked me into believing I could find my way around another smaller instance of its uncertainty, the unanswered questions it breeds. Time to pack away our neat little bow for another day.