In the context of GO:OD AM, this track plays an important role in showcasing Malcolm as a man. Consider “ROS” the best case scenario for pillow talk.
Mac Miller once said that “you speak with your hands” when you play the piano. And musically, all the while, everything sounds gorgeously done. They sound trying, but no longer toxic and questionable. We have arrived at a place where Mac Miller knows the worth of an argument and the staying power of his relationships. His pain, of course, comes from the crumbling edges of his love affair, and yet it is not the focal point of the track. With “ Baby, where'd you go? What's so wrong? / I'm right here…” leading into “ Do you know I’m in pain” we have the foundation of Mac’s best moments, triggering the painful with the pleasurable in one swoop. Certainly, we feel our third eye opened at the onset of this at-peace Mac Miller. Mac contends with mortality, but only for a moment as his mind is squarely on love as a form of enlightenment. The darkness of this track, unlike his other works, is easy to miss and mostly subdued. He is giddy and gleeful, brought to life by his love in that way we know romantic love can rejuvenate us.
Everything is, for once, sunny in his sonic world.
Ty Dolla $ignįrom the title to the Good Will Hunting sample, to the pureness of the track, “Soulmate” is one of Mac Miller’s most refined loved songs, perhaps to the point of being a drop too pristine. When Mac belts the hook (“ Just a little taste and you know she got you / Can you hide away? Can you hide away?”) on the Watching Movies live album, we hear how small he must have felt, and how terrified, and how desperate to husband something special in this dark and destructive world. It was simply impossible to take all of his buzzing energy and leave it static.
Mac Miller’s passion could never be contained in full to wax. “Objects” is yet another song that has an incredible live rendition. When we fuse the things we do best, we are left with a new and even better thing. First, a classic in the Mac Miller’s Head Is Overrun canon, and the Mac Miller Is In Love canon. The song is a classic in two canons, then. The balance of these ideals makes “Objects in the Mirror” a tortured helix, where Mac uses love as an avenue for relief. He is ever-preoccupied by atrocity, but still finds time for love and splendor. By the second verse, his penchant for love becomes a set of crippling fears. Mac sounds both in love and disappointed in himself. Love can be wanton and desperate, and “Perfecto” is proof that our intentions do not always match our outcomes. We all know what it means to want something so bad you break it by mistake. “Perfecto” is a string of arguments in poetic motion, and we feel for Mac. “ Tell me you love me, spin me around / Pretty please pick me up in the air and don't put me down,” he urges. The breakdown of the track, a cataclysmic leveling, shows us that Mac’s irreverence was childish defensiveness. This, of course, informs the “ (Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it?)” that peppers the hook. If you fight enough, the fights become routine and unremarkable, and they never dissipate. We are the only ones in the midst of strife now, and yet we cannot seem to wrest our way out we don’t want to. Something to be weathered, Mac never once sounds despondent as he admits to “ buggin’, buggin’, makin’ something out of nothin’.” Closing the first verse with “ I'm treading water, I swear / That if I drown I don't care / They callin' for me from the shore, I need more” as it relates to the hook, puts us in a position of indulging in the turmoil to the point of it damaging everything and everyone. The first verse and hook of “Perfecto” illustrate pettiness and argument, anxiety and obsession, as features of any old love story.