Change The Record: Mac Miller – Balloonerism

After my year-end list and reviewing SZA, I think it’s high time I finally cover an album from 2025, kicking off what’s already becoming quite an interesting year for music. Of course, calling “Balloonerism” a 2025 album would require some monumental asterisks, but let’s keep it out of the opening spiel. What better way to follow up a review for an album right before 2025 than to review an album released right after 2025 starts?

Mac Miller was an American rapper from Pittsburgh who had quite the prolific career, evolving from the frat-boy, white guy stoner rap days of “K.I.D.S” and “Blue Slide Park” to the melodic and gorgeous final albums of “Swimming” and “Circles” as well as the weird and experimental, but frankly unimpeachably good mixtapes of “Macadelic” and “Faces.” Throughout his many albums and various personas, he tackled numerous different sounds, ideas, structures, and topics, making him one of the most unique rappers of his era. Important to note though, as you can tell, I’m speaking in past tense because Mac Miller tragically passed away from a drug overdose in September 2018, cutting short his life and his unbelievable career. 

As with any dead musician these days, just because he’s dead doesn’t mean we’ll forever be out of music from him. I mean, XXXTentacions’s estate has been milking every accidental cough and stubbed toe they can find to make new records for him. Mac’s story post-death, however, has been wildly different from most posthumous artists in that it’s been handled with far more grace and respect, most notably with “Circles” in 2020, a mostly finished and recorded send-off for Mac that was completed by a friend to honor his legacy.

Now, we arrive at “Balloonerism.” Unlike “Circles,” this album wasn’t recorded that close to his passing. Instead, it was made all the way back in 2014, around the same time he was making his magnum opus, the “Faces” mixtape. This provides some important context for “Balloonerism” as an album that was almost born from a completely different time and is being let out of its cryo chamber a decade after its inception. Despite that though, it’s shockingly timeless. It certainly feels like it’s from the 2010s but it could have easily been released last week and still felt fresh. Beyond anything else, it is most of all, a beautiful masterpiece.

Enough talking around the album’s legacy–let’s get into its meat. It opens with “DJ’s Chord Organ,” a serene, mostly instrumental opener with additional vocals from this very niche and obscure singer, SZA, who I’m sure has a very bright career ahead of her. It’s mostly comprised of a layered electronic organ melody that drones beautifully throughout the track, with SZA providing some gorgeous angel vocals over it, making for a lovely lead into the tone and sound of the album. 

This leads into the first standard hip-hop track of the album, “Do You Have A Destination,” which is filled with Mac’s usual depressed but charming musings on mortality and fame. The second verse literally starts with the line “I went to sleep famous and I woke up invisible.” Clearly, an insinuation of how fickle this fame we chase is. It’s led by his deeply compelling flows, cadence, and production, with his vocals layered throughout the background and the beat filled with lovely electronic pianos, with drums that almost sound muted and distorted, but in a way that’s more retro than abrasive. It’s a deeply absorbing track to start the rapping on.

The next track was the album’s first single and the only track released before it officially came out, “5 Dollar Pony Rides,” which was released about a week before the album dropped. It’s a smooth track with tambourine and that signature Casio keyboard throughout the album, mixed with Mac’s trademark blend of lighthearted fun and a deep sense of melancholy, musing about a girl he’s dating who he’s dedicated to spoiling due to a rough and neglected upbringing. Specifically, the line “Your daddy should’ve bought you that pony,” mixing with the song’s title, insinuates the father couldn’t even bother the lightest expenses to make his daughter happy. It’s a very fun track with a very catchy, addictive chorus, making perfect sense as a single, and I think it sets expectations well.

The next two tracks, “Friendly Hallucinations” and “Mrs. Deborah Downer,” are a great one-two punch of melancholic songs for looking out your rain-covered window (I wonder how many times I’ve said one-two punch in these reviews). They’re a great duo, with “Friendly Hallucinations” playing into the album’s themes–and honestly, the theme of Mac’s career as a whole–drugs, with a girl retreating more and more into her delusions and hallucinations due to her dependency on drugs and the vain comfort they provide. “Mrs. Deborah Downer” is even more somber, a deep reflection on mortality and the dust we all return to at the end of the day, set over a shimmeringly downtempo beat that feels like the ripples of water at dusk.

The next track, “Stoned,” is an even deeper spiral, set over this guitar section and rippling synths, as it muses about a girl who’s deeply antisocial and self-loathing, only finding joy in her brief highs. The chorus talks about her locking herself in the bathroom just to find peace, only to be followed up by knocking noises, almost as if to bring her and us back to reality. It all hits hard to me, as I struggle with mental illness like this. I live deeply in the line: “She hates that she cries when she’s all by herself, and she’s always all by herself.” At the end of the day, all that can be done is get stoned and zone the world out. It’s the closest to making heaven our home we can get.

This is followed by “Shangri-La,” a short, almost spoken-word interlude that bridges into the second part of this album, starting with the track “Funny Papers.” A soft, piano-led track where Mac muses on life and death, reading of both a man’s desperate and tragic suicide as well as the birth of a new baby–both in the same newspaper or the “Funny Papers,” as he calls it. The track clearly draws a direct juxtaposition between the tragedy and glory of death and birth, with the general comedic mundanity of being read in the same paper where Garfield is being printed. 

It also features one of my favorite choruses on the album: “If I can pay rent by Tuesday, I could be rich by April Fool’s Day.”  Following this is “Excelsior,” another shorter track, but one that’s equally gorgeous. Led by the softest piano and a warped sample, it features Mac’s most distant and echoey vocals yet, as he raps about the lives and general innocence of many kids at an orphanage–the lies and troubles they haven’t gone through yet, while still suffering from their insecurities and issues. I love how the track ends–it flourishes and climaxes into this gorgeous guitar piece as Mac screams “Abra Cadabra” with increasing vigor and passion, almost as if he’s letting off as much childlike joy as he can.

After that run is the somewhat curious “Transformations,” where Mac raps as his horrorcore alter ego, “Delusional Thomas.” Over a very skeletal and ominous beat, he delivers distorted vocals through the signature “Delusional Thomas” helium voice filter– making it feel like a track lifted straight from the first “Delusional Thomas” mixtape. It’s a nifty little detour, even if it feels somewhat out of place within this album’s emotional core. 

Thankfully, the follow-up track “Manakins” is amazing. Featuring harpsichord flourishes and a repeating violin beat, it contains some of Mac’s most beautifully awkward yet endlessly charming singing over the chorus. It also contains some of his most sadly prescient lyrics in hindsight. He talks about his heroin addiction and literally says “It feels like I’m dying, dying, dying, I’m dead” in the chorus.

Finally, we reach the last two tracks, both quite lengthy.

First is “Rick’s Piano,” which kicks off with an adorable and silly intro with a dorky little knock-knock joke from Mac and his producer. It’s a much-needed track of levity amongst the raindrops, though it doesn’t lack the album’s somberness. It’s laced with hopefulness, as Mac raps about various people, their awkward lives, and their youth, but still holds firm to the idea that “The best is yet to come,” wondering whether things are as bad as we all worry. It’s a devastating but powerful wake-up call to stop doom-and-glooming through life and actually work towards something, played over the titular piano and some resonant guitar chords near the end.

Finally, the album ends with “Tomorrow Will Never Know,” an 11-minute, ambient finale, a deep float through space, eyes shut, letting the dawn flow over you. It’s psychedelic, with Mac’s vocals and his philosophical ideas almost becoming another part of this all-flowing river, his spoken-word raps becoming another ambient floating point. The track is filled with kids laughing and cheering throughout, perhaps a reflection of childhood lost or rediscovered, as the album fades out.

I don’t know if I’d call “Balloonerism” my favorite Mac Miller project–that honor would probably go to “Faces.” And I don’t know if an album released in the first few weeks of the year would be my album of the year.

But I do know this:

This album has connected to me deeply in a way a lot of albums haven’t in recent years. It’s a deep and psychedelic reflection of the mind and our anxieties. I couldn’t be happier that it is finally out for everyone to listen to. It’s a gorgeous piece of art, and I can’t give Mac Miller and his producers enough love for making it exist. It’s an album that feels like heaven and sounds like home, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Keep floating on, Mac.