When I heard “Once a Day” on that plane, it was like a knife in the heart. The emotional content of the album - his struggles with depression and anxiety - would be poignant even without knowing his fate. It wasn’t like an executive decision or anything. “I Can See” was one of those, also “Complicated,” “Blue World” and “Everybody.” I played some things on those tracks to make them feel like the others, but those vocals were already there. There were a few songs the family gave me that he’d been working on independently that I thought fit thematically with what we had worked on. Somebody just told me something about that, some kerfuffle. There’s been some speculation about whether there are Ariana Grande vocals on “I Can See.” Like, “I want this to feel wider,” or “deeper.” So, for me, I felt like, “O.K., these are technical jobs that I can do.” He had talked to me a lot about what he wanted sonically.
So I was just trying to figure out what I could get out of the way of, instead of trying to “invent” a track or a song, or make something that wasn’t a song seem more like a song. And every artist changes their mind every two weeks.
MAC MILLER FULL DISCOGRAPHY MAC
What did you see as your role on the album? Were you solving a puzzle? Or trying to discern what Mac would do? I think he wanted to tell people, “I still love this, I still do this.” And I believe the third one would have been just a pure hip-hop record. The second, which he’d already decided would be called “Circles,” would be song-based. There were supposed to be three albums: the first, “Swimming,” was sort of the hybridization of going between hip-hop and song form. He had this whole aquatic theme that came out of something we’d talked about when he was working on “Swimming.” I’d noticed he mentioned water a few times in the lyrics, and then that grew into all these discussions about water and what it sounds like that became kind of a running joke. There are a lot of people who spend all their time trying to do that and aren’t as good.” It’s super sad to talk about, but I just felt like, “Oh, well, here’s a big part of your future. He started to play these things that were really insightful and individualistic but still felt influenced by his love of hip-hop and R&B and dance music. Especially after we’d spent some real, private time making music. And I don’t know if he came to me seeking approval, or just some help with some sounds or something, but I can tell you he got a lot of approval very quickly. I think he wasn’t sure if this confessional, singing, non-beat-driven stuff that he’d been working on was good or not. To his credit, he never put any claims on me. I mean, I … it wasn’t something I was itching to do. I thought that maybe I would reach out to the family or the record company.
Because my feeling was, “Yeah, this stuff is as good as I remember. It could only play certain things in the library, and at some point the working tracks for a couple of the songs came up: “Good News” and “Once a Day.” It flattened me. I remember, before that call came in, being on a flight and listening to music with my phone on airplane mode. It was about three months later when I got a call from the family asking me to finish the album. I wasn’t listening through stuff or doing anything in regard to it. But the experience in the music store nudged open the door for what became an unusually intimate collaboration.Īt what point did you start thinking about the music? “He said that he wanted one because he’d seen you playing it.”Īs they got to know each other in the months that followed, during which Brion became Miller’s friend, co-conspirator and something of a mentor, he never told Miller this story.
“Well, I just sold him a Fender Telecaster,” the store owner replied. Taken aback, Brion said that indeed he had, keeping the circumstances to himself. “Have you ever met Mac Miller?” asked the owner of a music store he frequented in Los Angeles one day. But Brion said he later got wind of a larger plan at work. The younger man, whom Brion described in a recent interview as seeming nervous and a little shy, gave no indication that he wanted anything more from the interaction than stimulating conversation. A few years ago, while visiting a friend who was trying to get sober, Jon Brion, the producer and composer known for his work with Fiona Apple, Kanye West and Paul Thomas Anderson, was introduced to a young musician who was fighting an addiction battle of his own.
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