Is Mac DeMarco trolling Mitski?
The internet is not happy with the similarities between Mac DeMarco's new album and Mitski's critically-acclaimed 2018 album
Lo-fi, slacker rock musician and perpetual fool Mac DeMarco has, as well as announcing "a day of music and rides" at the Dreamland amusement park in Margate (29 Jun) and an appearance at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Bandstand (26 Jun) this summer, unveiled a new album, Here Comes the Cowboy, due for release on 10 May via his own newly-launched, cryptically-named Mac’s Record Label.
Of the album, DeMarco said: "Cowboy is a term of endearment to me, I use it often when referring to people in my life. Where I grew up, there are many people that sincerely wear cowboy hats and do cowboy activities. These aren’t the people I’m referring to." And with the announcement, DeMarco also released the album’s lead single, Nobody, along with an accompanying video. In it, DeMarco can be seen donning a cowboy hat and smoking a cigar; his face painted green to resemble a lizard.
If you’ve been paying attention to music in the last year, you may notice a slight similarity in the album’s title to that of one of the most critically-acclaimed albums of 2018, Mitski’s Be the Cowboy, and the title of one of the album’s most popular singles, also called Nobody. DeMarco, however, appears to be blissfully unaware of this, despite sharing the same PR as Mitski and supposedly being involved in the music industry. Mitski responded on Twitter in the best way possible, laughing it off as one big old troll:
haha! I'm 100% sure mac & I just went fishing in the same part of the collective unconscious! What's wild is we have the same PR, so I LOVE my personal conspiracy theory that she heard the album+track titles but kept quiet thinking maybe some Mac fans will mistakenly find me loll https://t.co/qSTDXJBHjK
— mitski (@mitskileaks) March 5, 2019
alright. Honored to serve as minor clickbait profit generator + light distraction from the hellish real world for the day but i feel v empty from looking at this phone screen for so long, let's all please stop and get out of here. Thanks to everyone who cares for my music, truly!
— mitski (@mitskileaks) March 5, 2019
But, as expected, the internet is not happy, and Mitski fans are seriously coming for DeMarco:
mitski: this is a concept unreachable to me in the sense that i’m an asian woman and it symbolises what american society views as being admirable, primarily using white men in classic westerns as a metaphor to something i cannot be seen as
— indiana jones (@indiasey) March 5, 2019
mac demarco: i call my friends cowboy
tbh I believe that Mac demarco had never listened to Mitski I mean why would a white guy whose entire vibe is “i don’t give a fuck” bother paying attention to the important work being made by a Japanese-American woman
— Hether Fortune (@hetherrfortune) March 5, 2019
Mitski: be the cowboy
— Lydia (@lydandtonic) March 5, 2019
Mac DeMarco: okay
Mitski's Be the Cowboy is out now via Dead Oceans; Mac DeMarco's Here Comes the Cowboy is released on 10 May via Mac's Record Label
Mac DeMarco plays Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow, 26 Jun