Mac and Mitski.Earlier today, sweet, typically harmless indie boy Mac DeMarco announced his next album, Here Comes the Cowboy, and shared its first single, “Nobody.” Perfectly innocuous. Utterly unremarkable. Right? Ho boy, you wish! As it so happens, be it by sheer coincidence, troll-y marketing, or willful ignorance, we’ve heard it all before. Just last year, actually, when light of our lives Mitski released her treasured album Be the Cowboy, well ahead of our present yee-haw cultural dominance. Its standout single? Also titled “Nobody.”
How mad is the internet right now at the presumed theft by an average man of a woman’s great work, you ask? Off the charts!
when a man says your point, louder, in a meeting two minutes later https://t.co/AcbDa09XiM
— Stacey Anderson (@staceykanderson) March 5, 2019mitski: 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
mac demarco: i call my friends cowboy
— indiana jones (@indiasey) March 5, 2019The whole "I'm a slacker who doesn't pay attention" bit was losing strength, Mac DeMarco had to kick it up a notch
— Jeremy Gordon (@jeremypgordon) March 5, 2019the audacity to mitski!!! https://t.co/1MfurHSCEZ
— ilana kaplan (@lanikaps) March 5, 2019the precise thing that annoys me about this is that it reeks of "no one wants to tell this guy someone just did this (and quite well)"https://t.co/sOtOF3pEVc
— Jill Mapes (@jumonsmapes) March 5, 2019I mean either it's a lie/trolling, or he didn't hear, you know, the most acclaimed album (incidentally by a woman) in his field last year, which seems... suspect
— Laura Snapes (@laurasnapes) March 5, 2019Mitski’s original didn’t fly under the radar — the album topped several year-end lists, including Vulture’s — so how could Mac have been so clueless? Well, as it also happens, he preemptively acknowledged his project’s likeness to Mitski in a statement from his rep, saying, welp, he never even listened to her album or knew it or her song “Nobody” existed until he’d already titled his, so no harm no foul. “This one is my cowboy record,” he elaborated. “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.”
For Mitski’s part — whose opinion is the only one that matters here — she’s not peeved. In fact, she finds the whole thing silly, as should we all, because look at who we’re talking about. “‘I’m 100% sure mac & I just went fishing in the same part of the collective unconscious!” she tweeted, noting that she and Mac share a publicist and so this was all likely a stunt not meant to roil the far corners of Indie Music Twitter. She continued, “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.”
my god, why is everyone mad? i'm laughing!
— mitski (@mitskileaks) March 5, 2019haha! 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, 2019Anyway thanks for the laugh, Mac! Happy release!
— mitski (@mitskileaks) March 5, 2019Okay, but who will invite Hozier’s “Nobody” to weigh in on this debate?
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Did Mac DeMarco Copy Mitski or Is It All a Troll?ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK57kWlocmdgaHyurcJmm56lkaewsHnMoquso5lisLC606umr52iqMZvtNOmow%3D%3D