The first time I heard Post Malone was when I was in second grade, waking up early in the morning, watching music videos on MTV, MTV 2, and VH1. One morning, we, me and my mamí, flipped over to MTV 2, and listened to one of Posty’s first hits, White Iverson. It was nice chillax track, with pleasing visuals of a car (believe it’s a Rolls Royce) doing donuts, along with montages of him shooting some hoops and singing. We practically fell in love with the song immediately, it had such a great energy, along with Post’s unique vocals with the assist of auto tune, it felt really unique and pleasing. We aren’t the most “die hard” fans of him, but we do love him and his music that gives, along with his production crew.

Most recently I’ve been attached to this recently released album, listening and admiring the great variety yet consistent composition in each song, same goes for the album art. Speaking of which, I did this sketch inspired by it!

The album’s themes include being self aware of emotions, getting back out there, romance, feeling energetic, alcoholism, cigarettes, regret, depression, and suicidal thoughts. As per my interpretation, the album comes from a dark times the musician had from being a big star at a long of fame to the stress of the pandemic, a more of a intimate personal album compared to rest of his incredibly successful discography. His feelings are released to a great extent in the second half of the album, in a manner that feels as if he’s to venting out to himself or to a therapist, I feel this best true with “Waiting For A Miracle”, where he alludes to his suicidal thoughts.

I like to think of the last verse as a slowed down emotional breakdown, where you feel no control over what you say to calm yourself or express how you feel in specific terms, where you perform rotations 100 times over Earth does in a day against your will, a sense of uncontrollable and endless chaos. Usually in songwriting and writing in your journal, especially if a song concerns your emotions, you clean up the “messy” parts in aim to keep audience focus. However, Post took a contrary approach, with this song in particular, where he left in his thoughts untouched, to emphasize how messy his emotions and mental health were, highlighting suicide in particular.

The closer “New Recording 12, Jan 3, 2020” is a callback to Euthanasia, another track featuring suicidal thoughts, and is presumed to be a demo/first incarnation of the song, showing non auto tuned vocals with reverb. Note how I discussed his feelings in past tense, this track is the answer, for the title indicates this was over two years ago. As with any or all emotions, they’ll still linger or leech in not so often, but you can possibly overcome them by making the right decisions to help yourself, sometimes unintentionally or even unknowingly. With that being said, it is likely that he’s been able to let go of these emotions now that they’ve been expressed to us, showing how long he’s been coping with them and the efforts to help himself out.

This album marks the first Post Malone album I’ve listen all the way through and glad it was this one, the vents in here, especially the “Waiting For A Miracle” vent. It hit close to home and made me realize how to describe my emotions, although not to the extremity of suicide though, don’t worry!

So all in all, amazing album!