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Mac DeMarco’s new album, Here Comes the Cowboy, is out this Friday (May 10), and it finds him continuing to mellow our from the rubbery, weed-fueled jams that defined his early releases. Here, he’s quieter and more contemplative, as we heard on 2017’s This Old Dog. One of the most delicate, prettiest entries comes via a sparse, nocturnal number called “Heart to Heart.” As DeMarco reveals in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, it was penned as an ode to his pal Mac Miller, who died in September 2018.
The pair had grown close in the year leading up to Miller’s sudden death, when gradually what began as a tongue-in-cheek feud over the similarities of their names grew into a genuine friendship. “We had this strange history, and then we became really close, and I was going over to his place multiple times a week, up until the point that he passed away,” DeMarco said.
Miller’s influence also led to DeMarco including another quiet number, “Skyless Moon,” on the album despite DeMarco’s uncertainty whether or not it would make the final cut. “We just listened to it in silence, and he just looked at me after, and he was like ‘Yes! Yes!'” DeMarco said. “I probably wouldn’t have [put the song] on the album otherwise.”
Last summer, a day after Miller’s death, DeMarco dedicated his song “Watching Him Fade Away” to Miller at a show in Central Park. He also wore one of Miller’s Swimming hats for his recent appearance on The Tonight Show.
DeMarco’s rollout for Here Comes the Cowboy has been fraught with mini media controversies since he announced the title and first single, “Nobody,” in March. Mitski fans found both titles similar to her own 2018 album, Be the Cowboy, which also features a song called “Nobody.”
DeMarco addressed this in the new interview, saying, “I thought Mitski was a rapper.” He also said he apologized to her and they cleared things up: “She was very cool about it. I just thought it was a cool coincidence, and I think she took it that way as well.” Her tweets on the subject suggest that as well.
The visuals for Here Comes the Cowboy have been wild, by the way, and Tuesday’s latest video is no exception. It’s for a song called “On the Square” and it features humans with animalistic heads. Check that out below. Read the entire interview over at EW.
Rock
Music
Mac Miller
Mac DeMarco