In April 2020, when the pandemic first hit, I became something of a serial ghoster. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been a cause for concern. Even back then I was a notoriously bad replier, and a few days off the grid was common for everyone. But when the entire nation is under lockdown and no one can reach you, you stay gone, which naturally alarmed a lot of people. My inbox was flooded with worried e-mails friends and counselors. We were graduating in three months. I was slated for high honors and a university spot in July. But whatever care I had left for my education seemed to have extinguished in the dark of my new situation: in the wake of COVID-19, I had become extremely, inexplicably depressed.
Nothing I’d ever experienced could compare to those first weeks in April. My thoughts were dark and suffocating. I spent entire days chained to my bed. On one of those days, around mid-May, I remember hyperventilating in the shower — I’d been hit by a panic attack so sudden and unbearable, struck by visions of furious friends and hopelessly destroyed futures. My first and most relentless thought was that I wanted to die. The loop I was trapped in was and debilitating, and the idea of breaking out of it seemed unfathomable.
But that day meant something, though. I remember it with vivid clarity because of what happened after — how it was the day I learned, somehow three months late, that Mac Miller’s estate had posthumously released a song called Good News. And how that simple discovery, as ridiculous as it sounds, changed everything.
Good News was Mac’s first single since passing in 2018. In it, he raps about wrestling with depression — the same kind of depression that had recently sunk its claws into my life. “I spent the whole day in my head,” he begins, after a plucky hook. “Do a little spring cleaning. I’m always too busy dreaming.” I remember how those first lines struck an instant chord in me, how I could almost feel them reverberate through my skull. It was a full body reaction — I’d never had anything resonate so quickly before. The visualizer kickstarted a familiar hyper-fixation, the kind that transforms into something of a lifeline. I dove back into a musical rabbit hole that had surreptitiously popped up some years before.
I was first introduced to Mac Miller at age eleven, by way of The Way, his 2013 collaboration with teen girl icon Ariana Grande. Back then I knew him only as the guy in the sweater, and later on as her celebrity boyfriend. When he died, an accidental overdose five years later, it shocked the entire world. People like him seemed so invincible back then. Everyone who knew of him grieved. It was only in September 2019, a full year after his death, that I stumbled on his Tiny Desk performance. I was seventeen, bored on YouTube, and completely unaware that this was the video that would change my life. It was my first real introduction to him, in truth: not just his music but him, who he was as a person. I was caught off guard by his easy charm, his infectious energy — you just couldn’t tear your eyes away.
And so I fell in love so easily in the months after, the way you probably would with a first boyfriend. Mac struck my soul in a way that it was impossible not to. And his music always came off as sincere, groovy but surprisingly honest — like he could read my thoughts before I could even begin to have them. That was the magic of Mac Miller. He could make anything sound spiritual.
I remember that in those first months, I was strangely private about my new favorite artist, even though it was ridiculous. The entire world knew him, and for much longer than I had. But for some reason, admitting I related to his music felt like revealing too much about myself. I had the impulse to keep it hidden for a while longer. As I dove through his discography, from his latest album Swimming to his 2010 mixtape K.I.D.S., I couldn’t help but mourn. So many of his songs felt like messages from heaven.
I listened to Mac so often that he inevitably became the soundtrack to my life. Congratulations when I had a crush. The Spins when I was happy. There was never an emotion he couldn’t put into words, and I thought as much listening to Good News. I don’t want to die — but a prolonged moment of peace would be nice. Life can be eo terribly exhausting.
In the end, my self-imposed social detox (the ‘nice term’ for the isolation) lasted two years longer than I hoped it would. I faced my backlogs eventually, graduated high school, but put off college for a year. I didn’t get better right away. It was in early 2022, after a difficult first semester, that I found myself gravitating once again to his music. This time it was uncharted territory: Circles, his final studio album, released in 2020.
It was like discovering Mac all over again. I devoured Circles faster than anything else of his; I hadn’t realized before then how much I’d missed his presence in my life. I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that I’d begun to cry. “I miss him so much,” I’d texted a friend that very same night. “He was actually speaking to my soul.”
Maybe I didn’t know it then, but that period was the start of a long road to healing. By the end of the year I was back on my feet. I was excited about school again and talking to my friends. I began doing things that for the longest time had been unimaginable. I don’t know if Mac was the catalyst, or if his music just happened to be there for the ride. But I am insanely grateful.
In 2022, four years after his death, there’s very little praise that hasn’t been said about Mac Miller. His legacy is cemented not only by his records, but by the millions of people who love and respect him. In Malcolm’s short lifetime he accomplished no easy feat: he changed lives, saved them, and continues to do so even in death. His music is transformative. It’s medicine. It’s magic.
I don’t know if I’m qualified to speak on the true magnitude of Mac Miller’s impact. I can only speak on his own mark on my life, which I know for sure is indelible. In three short years he’s made me understand the brevity of life — and thus its preciousness, its beauty. It’s hard, it’s imperfect, but it’s worth it, like he says in Perfecto.
“It ain’t that bad. Ain’t so bad,” he finally bids in Good News. It is, I’m convinced, his official goodbye to us. The first time I heard him say it, I wasn’t so sure. But now I sing along with full conviction.
Because it really isn’t so bad after all. I know that because of him.
I love life, Malcolm. Thank you.
Lingering in Doorways 
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