Getty Mac Miller performs.
Mac Miller’s posthumous album Circles will be released at 9 p.m. PT on January 16 or midnight ET on January 17, depending on your time zone. If that is too late for you to stay awake, you can stream and listen to it at your convenience.
Generally, albums become available around midnight ET on streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. This was the case for all of the releases during Miller’s lifetime, including 2016’s The Divine Feminine and 2018’s Swimming.
Mac Miller’s ‘Circles’ Will Be Released at Midnight ET on Friday, January 17
On occasion, streaming platforms will throw a curveball at listeners. Take Kanye West’s 2018 album Ye for example. It was originally scheduled for release at midnight on June 1, but it wasn’t made available until the following afternoon. A similar thing happened with Chance the Rapper’s 2019 album The Big Day. While it was slated for release at midnight ET, it wasn’t released on streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify until the afternoon of the next day.
Miller’s family announced the posthumous album on January 8. They issued a statement on Instagram that detailed the late rapper’s plan, which was to record a companion piece to his album Swimming. “Here we are. The act of having to write this at all feels surreal,” the statement said. “At the time of his passing, Malcolm was well into the process of recording his companion album to Swimming, entitled Circles.”
Miller Envisioned the New Album as a Companion Piece to 2018’s ‘Swimming’
“Two different styles complementing each other, completing a circle — Swimming in Circles was the concept,” the statement added.
He had been working with Jon Brion, who after hearing some early versions of songs, cleared his calendar to help Malcolm fine-tune them. After his passing, Jon dedicated himself to finishing Circles based on his time and conversations with Malcolm. We are eternally grateful to Jon and to those who gave their best to the difficult and emotional task of putting out this body of work.
The album was preceded by the lead single “Good News,” which was accompanied by a music video. Tidal reported that the standard edition of the album boasted 12 tracks, and the deluxe carried two bonus tracks with no listed features. Check out the full tracklist below:
1. “Circles”
2. “Complicated”
3. “Blue World”
4. “Good News”
5. “I Can See”
6. “Everybody”
7. “Woods”
8. “Hand Me Downs”
9. “That’s on Me”
10. “Hands”
11. “Surf”
12. “Once a Day”
13. “Right”
14. “Floating”
Jon Brion produced seven tracks on Swimming, including “So It Goes,” which Miller previewed on his Instagram Story hours before his death. Brion told Rolling Stone that he was not familiar with Miller’s music prior to working on Swimming, but he was instantly won over by the rapper’s willingness to blur genre lines. “Some of the most interesting stuff is when the line is blurred between him having any kind of flow or just being song-like,” he explained.