Mac DeMarco has revealed that the late Mac Miller was the inspiration for two tracks on his upcoming new album ‘Here Comes the Cowboy’. The Canadian musician is gearing up to release the follow-up to his 2017 album ‘This Old Dog’ with ‘Here Comes the Cowboy’, which is due to arrive on Friday (May 10). DeMarco has now spoken about the impact that his close friend Miller, who died at the age of 26 last September, had on the making of the record. Speaking to EW, DeMarco said that the track ‘Heart to Heart’ was written in tribute to the late rapper. Advertisement “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 recalled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMAC_jDPqc DeMarco also spoke about the song ‘Skyless Moon’, which was similarly influenced by his friendship with Miller. Recounting how they listened to the song during one of the final times they hung out together, DeMarco said: “We just listened to it in silence, and he just looked at me after, and he was like ‘Yes! Yes!’. I probably wouldn’t have [put the song] on the album otherwise. “God bless him,” he added. Advertisement Earlier today, DeMarco shared the song ‘On The Square’ from his new album – and released its creepy accompanying video.<doc-sep>When Mac DeMarco announced the title of his fourth studio album, Here Comes the Cowboy, it seemed like he was following in the footsteps of Kacey Musgraves and Cardi B in the recent trend of the “yeehaw agenda.” Despite the name, the Los Angeles-based indie rocker doesn’t think the record has any cowboy or outlaw themes embedded in it. Honestly, he says, he just made some songs. “I think a lot of my music is usually escapist, [like a] grass is greener, daydream kind of thing; I’m using the imagery of cowboys in that form,” DeMarco tells EW, adding, “I like to think of this record as kind of the interpretation of the idea of the cowboy from somebody who knows absolutely nothing about cowboys.” On Cowboy, DeMarco, who’s from western Canada, found himself coming from an eccentric character’s perspective — an isolated wanderer of sorts. The 28-year-old musician spent six months writing short songs when he had spare moments on tour, and started recording the album the day after he got off the road, with the project coming together in just a few weeks. “It kind of drove me nuts,” he admits. Part of that had to do with his improved artistry. When he first started making music, he used whatever means he had to record and accepted the outcome. “Maybe I’ve set higher standards for how I want things sounding,” he concedes, recalling how the tech side used to complicate things for him. In terms of the music itself, Cowboy finds DeMarco focused on fewer elements and simpler arrangements. But the lyrics are more in-depth than he’s composed in the past. “Usually the lyrics are the last thing I do,” he says. “It bogs me down a bit, but [here] it felt a little more natural.” Ahead of the record, he spent time listening to Henry Flynt, an experimental artist from the late 1960s and 1970s who used tape loops and early experimental recording techniques to make music. In particular, DeMarco became fixated on “Graduation,” which features Kermit the Frog-like vocals and mimics the eerie vibe DeMarco seems to have channeled into his own project. Despite DeMarco’s specific vision, the record announcement arrived with a bit controversy. When the title was revealed, there was an uproar about its apparent similarities to the name of Mitski’s 2018 album, Be The Cowboy. DeMarco says he didn’t know anything about it. “I thought Mitski was a rapper,” he says. But he ended up apologizing to Mitski about the whole debacle. “She was very cool about it. I just thought it was a cool coincidence, and I think she took it that way as well,” he says. DeMarco thinks the people who were most up in arms about the comparisons didn’t even listen to the new song. “The music sounds absolutely nothing alike, but I think that’s the world we’re living in nowadays, where people are more interested in the visceral and idealistic sides of being involved with an artist, which is fine. It was just really confusing to me.” Even if he had known of the similarities, he wouldn’t have changed anything. Here Comes The Cowboy is also a departure from DeMarco’s 2017 album, This Old Dog, which centered on his complicated relationship with his father. Despite how personal that record was, he thinks his latest LP is even more so — but not in the obvious sense. “It feels more ‘me’ than the last one did, but it’s hard to put it into words,” he says. The introspectiveness he’s referring to go beyond lyrics. On “Little Dogs March,” DeMarco says the song’s slow, strange feeling was something he was never able to portray emotionally in a soundscape before. The title track elicits the same feeling to DeMarco too. “It’s not really a song, but it can also make me feel very sad, so I don’t know what it is, but there are these notes of that in there,” he says. DeMarco can’t explain it any further than that — like something he knows he might only be able to hear and understand, which is also why he might like it. That same personal connection applied to lead single, “Nobody,” which he gravitated towards because of its eccentricities; he envisioned it being played on a dark stage. His second single, “All of Our Yesterdays” was a more classic choice — a stoner rock track paired with a meandering chorus and DeMarco’s signature lilt. The most poignant part of Here Comes the Cowboy comes on “Heart to Heart,” a tribute to rapper Mac Miller. DeMarco had gotten close with Miller just a year prior to his passing. Before that, DeMarco tried to have a faux beef with him because of their identical names. “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,” he says. Miller also influenced another track on the record: a sparse, psych-ballad called “Skyless Moon.” DeMarco wasn’t sure about putting it on the album, but one of the last times he saw Miller, the rapper asked him to play the song. “We just listened to it in silence, and he just looked at me after, and he was like ‘Yes! Yes!’” DeMarco recalls. “I probably wouldn’t have [put the song] on the album otherwise.“ DeMarco, fixed on that moment, pauses, with one last thought about Miller. “God bless him.“<doc-sep>
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.