“Internet’s busiest music nerd” Anthony Fantano was unable to hold back emotion while reviewing the track “Good News” from the upcoming Circles album from late rapper Mac Miller, the artist’s first posthumous album release.
In the modern age, no music artist is ever truly gone. Their legacy is often defined by their body of work, and for many, more work is released to the public even after they’ve passed on.
Another of these posthumous works is being released on January 17th, in the sixth studio album from artist Mac Miller, who tragically passed away in 2018. The new album is titled Circles, with the first single titled “Good News” released on January 9.
Anthony Fantano is a popular music reviewer who runs one of the most prominent music review YouTube channels in The Needle Drop, and also posts daily videos on his own personal channel Fantano.
On that channel, he does a show called Track Review, where he gives his first/second impression of new singles as they are released.
On his January 11th video, he reviewed the newest Mac track. After fast-forwarding through footage of his face listening to the song, viewers saw Anthony in tears, a rare moment of him struggling to maintain composure.
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“S**t, oh my God, the f**k am I even supposed to say about this?” Fantano asks aloud while trying to pull himself together. This reaction was a stark contrast to Fantano’s review of Mac’s last album, Swimming, which he gave a 3 out of 10, earning him 28k dislikes on the video compared to less than 8k likes.
After collecting himself, he goes on to praise the instrumentals of the song, calling it “breezy, gentle, and sweet” before highlighting individual aspects of the instrumentals that he thought were perfect for “the very intimate and close right-in-your-ear sound of Mac’s voice.”
Fantano then dove into the “surreal, difficult to listen to” themes of Mac’s lyrics on the track, saying that the discussions about isolation, depression, and how “good news is the only news people want to hear” were very difficult to listen to.
Fantano commented on the emotional weight of the song, saying “I like it, I think it’s really good, but it’s also a god damn wrecking ball…it really throws all of it on your f*****g lap.”
Mac Miller, born James Allen McCormick, was a hugely popular rap artist throughout the 2010s. He was found dead in September 2018 from an accidental drug overdose. He was 26. Circles is his first posthumous full album released since his death.