A review of Mac Miller's 'Balloonerism'

His most haunting album

A lot of the time, posthumous albums don’t hit their mark. They typically consist of a combination of unreleased songs or verses mashed together to try and create a flow that the artist would have never released if they had still been alive. In Mac Miller’s case, however, both of his posthumous albums, “Circles”, released on Jan. 17, 2020, and “Balloonerism”, released exactly five years later, are compositions of songs he had fully or partially recorded when he was alive with the intention of belonging on those albums.

Just like “Circles” is a companion album to “Swimming”, the final album released before Miller’s death, the same can be said about “Balloonerism” and “Faces”. Both projects confront Miller’s struggles with addiction and mental health but ‘Balloonerism’ remains dark.

Here is my reverse ranking of the album’s songs, although I’m not including “Tambourine Dream”, the album’s 33-second opening track featuring just a tambourine being played.

13: Shangri-La

This song just didn’t connect with me. The beat is too laid back and the lyrics didn’t really do anything for me apart from one line in the chorus where he says “If I die young, promise to smile at my funeral.” There’s a lot of eerie foreshadowing of his own death in this album that I’ll get to in other songs as well. “Shangri-La” is pretty much the only song on the album that I didn’t really like and couldn’t see myself listening to that often.

12: Transformations (feat. Delusional Thomas)

“Transformations” is the only song on the album to officially feature Miller’s alter ego Delusional Thomas, though he makes very short appearances on “Do You Have A Destination?”, “Funny Papers”, and “Rick’s Piano”. I love the intro to this song, it sounds like he recorded himself chilling at home and listening to the music being played in the background. There are classic Mac Miller comedic lines in this song like “your bitch like a bad fart, all she do is linger”, and the song as a whole sounds super psychedelic and it’s a nice change from the depressing songs on the album.

11: Mrs. Deborah Downer

Miller talks about his drug addiction heavily on this song and even mentions how it impacted some of his friendships. It’s hard to listen to when we know what’s going to happen to him following the recording of this song. I really enjoyed the beat on it, it sounds like it could have been on “Circles” and this was made years before he even dreamed of that album. This song and album in general really show how ahead of his time Miller could be while also making songs that fit with the times.

10: Friendly Hallucinations

This track sounds the most like the work he had been putting out at the time. “Friendly Hallucinations” is a very dreamy song and it makes me feel like I’m a piece of paper floating down to the ground, with Miller beckoning me to the ground. It sounds like it was plucked right from “Faces” and saved for the release of this album.

9: Tomorrow Will Never Know

The final song of the album is so haunting to listen to after his death, with him wondering aloud if people dream, love, and feel when they’re dead just like they do when they’re alive. Listening to this song you almost get the feeling he knew how he was going to die, with the words “your call has been forwarded to an automated-” repeating throughout the song and more than three minutes of the outro being a phone ringing and no one picking up. Both add to the feeling of despair the song conveys and has you waiting for Miller to pick up the ringing phone, something he’ll never be able to do.

8: DJ’s Chord Organ (feat. SZA)

This is the album’s trippiest song. It opens with haunting notes being played on a chord organ and SZA is incredible on the song. Before her verse the song makes you feel like you’re on a trip yourself before she comes in and sings beautifully. The song abruptly ends after more notes from the chord organ. This is also the first song featured on the short film that accompanies the album, available for streaming on Amazon Prime.

7: Stoned

This is one of my favorite choruses on the album, and the guitar riff in the beat makes the song so much better. The line “I swear to God, Heaven feels just like home” is another instance of him describing the feeling of being so high that you feel like you’re floating up to heaven, a sad foreshadowing of his own death.

6: Do You Have A Destination?

In this song, Miller is worried about where his life will end up as he grapples with the fame that has come with his popularity. He explains how he’s committed himself fully to making music but admits that the feeling can be invincible, making appearances on Jimmy Kimmel and Arsenio Hall’s shows. The song ends with Miller asking the title question, wondering again where he is destined to end up.

5: Manakins

Miller speaks heavily on death in this song, letting us know that “God is like the school bell, he gon’ tell you when your time is up.” It’s interesting that he compares God to a school bell in this song when the phone ringing in the outro of “Tomorrow Will Never Know” sounds bell-like, another bit of eerie foreshadowing in this album.

4: Excelsior

Childlike innocence is heavily featured on this song as Miller describes a playground scene before kids “get polluted, start thinkin’ like adults.” He wishes he could go back to when he was a kid when he wanted to be a wizard and when his biggest enemies were vegetables.

3: 5 Dollar Pony Rides

“5 Dollar Pony Rides” is the most upbeat song on the album, and was released eight days before the album’s full release. It’s a jazzy song, the beat reminding me of a song from the 70s and Miller sings about a relationship in which he wants to make a girl smile again. It’s a different vibe than the rest of the songs on the album but a welcome change.

2: Funny Papers

So much foreshadowing in this song. “There’s only so much time” and “Recently I only meet peace when in deep sleep” are two lines that are hard to listen to after his death. Miller also says he “Didn’t think anybody died on a Friday”, a tragic coincidence in that September 7, 2018, the day of his death, was a Friday.

1: Rick’s Piano

This is the best song on the album and will likely become one of my favorite Mac Miller songs in short order. Miller repeats a line throughout the song: “The best is yet to come”. Hearing it in 2025 when we know the projects he released after the song’s recording, “Faces”, “GO:OD AM”, “The Divine Feminine”, “Swimming”, and “Circles” were coming hurts. Imagine how good the next album was going to be.

In the chorus, Miller wonders what death feels like and why it steals life and light, a common theme on this album. His second question, though, “why does death steal life?”, stands out to me because he’s wrong. Mac Miller’s death didn’t steal his life, he’s lived on through his music and the millions of people that continue to play it every day around the world and that’s what makes this album release so special.