Professor Lobley
April 2, 2018
Macklemore’s ‘Glorious’ Comeback
On June 19, 1983 Benjamin Hammond Haggerty was born in the city of Seattle, Washington. Not long after that, after “Ben” reached his sixth birthday, he started to show interest towards rap/hip-hop music, as he spent his time listening to songs of these genres in the radio. With time, Haggerty began to make his first attempt to get involved in the music world as he started to write songs at the young age of fifteen. A couple of years later, as he dealt with high school and all of the experiences that come along with being a teenager, Hammond released his first ever mixtape at the age of seventeen. At this point, Hammond had chosen to go by the name of Professor Mack Elmore, which he would later shorten for simply Macklemore. He continued to make music for the next four years without officially releasing it for others to listen to until the first day of 2005, when he finally released his first complete album “The Language of My World”. At this point, young Macklemore had no idea of the bright future that lied ahead of him and his music.
Macklemore continued to work hard for his passion for music as he grew up. He would perform at local music festivals in Seattle and continue to release new music. His work started to gain recognition: at first he became popular in his hometown and places nearby, but soon enough people were downloading his music all around the country and he even made it to the seventh position in iTunes’ Hip-Hop chart, according to his biography by TheFamousPeople. From that point on, things would only look up for Macklemore as he met Ryan Lewis, the DJ and producer he would later on team up with. Together, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis released two different albums before separating on 2017: “The Heist” in 2012 and “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made” in 2016. The duo had an unbelievable career together, especially during the time they released the first of these two albums. With “The Heist”, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were nominated to 64 different awards, including seven Grammys from which they won four. Admirably enough, through all of his recently developed fame, Macklemore continued to create honest music with a purpose instead of only empty, commercial songs created just for the money all the time. In fact, in a good amount of his songs he would get into very relevant topics that concerned him and many of his followers. For example, in the song “Same Love” he expresses his disapproval of today’s society’s homophobia and in “Starting Over” where he opens up about his personal struggles with addiction in the past. At that point, Macklemore proved he enjoys singing about things that truly matter to him, and that has still not changed.
In September of 2017, Macklemore released his first album without Ryan Lewis since 2005: “Gemini”. Its lead single was released three months before the album and it was titled “Glorious”, featuring singer Skylar Grey. The first time one listens to “Glorious” one can tell that Macklemore has done everything he said he would do in his newest album: stay away from the political and heavily-controversial subjects that he has sung so much about before and make fun, happy music that he would “want to get into [his] car and listen to”. The song has been described as “celebratory” and “very uplifting”, two words which I feel represent the song in a very accurate manner. The truth is that the music can definitely be considered as “happy music”; it is very upbeat mostly due to the rapid drum beating all throughout the song. Other than the speedy percussion, it is also important to mention that there is an ongoing piano loop, which is the first thing you hear when the song starts, and it stays constant in all of Macklemore’s parts. One thing that makes the song change from time to time is the speed in which Macklemore sings; he manages to make the whole song feel even more accelerated when he picks up the pace of his rapping. On the other hand, we have Skylar Grey singing the chorus with her astonishing voice. During Grey’s parts, the song slows down its pace as she sings in a very high note, followed by what seems to be a choir singing in complete unison. The artists leave us with a final product that includes a mix of Grey’s heavenly vocals and Macklemore’s rapid, clever rap that perfectly complement each other.
It is also important to mention what the artists do with the lyrics of the song. “Glorious” was written in a collaboration between, Macklemore, Skylar Grey, Tyler Andrews, Tyler Dopps, and Budo, the same producer that Macklemore worked with when he released his first solo album back in 2005. According to Grey’s interview with Billboard, Macklemore “had the song started, he had a beat and his verses were already written, he just didn’t have a hook on it yet”. That is when she joined him to write the chorus and they met the rest of the crew to finish the final details of the song. Due to what I have read about Macklemore and Skylar Grey’s comments and interviews, I feel like the message they are trying to communicate is one of being content with what they have accomplished and about the place in their lives they are at.
In a more thorough analysis, there are some specific lines that I feel are worth breaking down. Macklemore opens up the song saying “You know I’m back like I never left”, and he is talking about his return to the music business after the time he took from it and after the hiatus with his former partner. He continues by saying “I got a new attitude and a lease on life; And some peace of mind”, proving how he knows life is not forever so he has to make the best of it (lease on life) and that he feels comfortable with the place he is in (peace of mind). He goes on by saying “I’m feeling glorious, The crib looking Victorian, You know that we been going in, Since we hopped out that Delorean”, which also exemplifies how happy he is right now by talking about the house he lives in (which is Victorian style), and talking about how far he has come since the song “Thrift Shop” (the car he drove in the music video was a Delorean). I also feel like Macklemore briefly mentions more than once how one should live their life to the fullest and actually do something with the time they have to leave their fingerprint on this Earth. I came to this conclusion after reading lines such as “I heard you die twice, once when they bury you in the grave; And the second time is the last time that somebody mentions your name” and “So when I leave here on this earth, did I take more than I gave?”. Then, the chorus, written mostly by Grey, is quite straight forward: she feels great about the point of her life she has reached due to her hard work. However, when she sings “I was born for this, born for this, It’s who I am, how could I forget?” it is probably the part of the song that means the most to her, because she is referring to how many artists lose their way sometimes and start to doubt themselves, and she knows it from personal experience. Apart from that, t
he song in general does not feel like it was targeted to a specific demographic or age group. It is a song that, according to me, can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of who they are or what their situation is.
Personally, I truly enjoy watching the official music videos of the songs I like, because it gives me an idea of what is going through the artist’s mind as they create their music. As it is explained in the first part of Beyoncé’s visual album from class, “I see music, it is more than what I hear”, and a music video lets the audience see that, too. During week 9 of class we talked about how “Musicians today understand the need to create ‘events’ around their albums”, and I definitely agree. Providing their audience with a music video lets the artists appeal to mo
re of their viewers’ senses, which makes their music become a more complete experience. This video in particular was one that I genuinely enjoyed, and probably the reason why I chose this specific song for the assignment. The video starts off before the song begins to play, with captions to let the viewer know what is happening as Macklemore walks towards a house in a suburban neighborhood. The viewer rapidly learns that he is giving a surprise visit to his (actual) grandmother on her 100th birthday. The video is quick to aim at the viewers’ feelings as they can see the way she reacts, amazed and overjoyed, and immediately bursts into tears of happiness. He gives her the option of doing anything she wants for her birthday, and she quickly responds “Oh God, I want to do it all”. To me, since the moment she says that phrase, the video is symbolizing the idea that we should live every day of our lives to the fullest and actually enjoy ourselves, it does not matter if we are 10 or 100 years old. Moreover, it can be interpreted as a message saying that we should do as much as we can to feel like we have truly lived; all of which I feel fits perfectly with the lyrics of the song. From that point on, the upbeat music starts and the video shifts from her house to many different locations as he takes his grandmother to do numerous activities. These activities include throwing eggs to a house, singing karaoke, going to an arcade, and even getting a lap-dance, all of which are considered to be activities fit for younger people, but activities that she is happy to be doing at her age.
Even though it can get somehow sentimental, the music video for “Glorious” is clearly a cheerful one. First, Macklemore’s grandmother is definitely enjoying herself throughout the four minutes of the video; she laughs countless times, which leaves the viewer with an unavoidable smile on their face. Apart from that, all of the scenes are super bright and full of color, which I feel subconsciously is a factor that makes the video per se much more vivid and eye appealing. Simultaneously, as I previously stated, the musical elements of the song are very upbeat, so that definitely also helps make the video a cheerful one. In fact, I would dare to say this is one of those videos that people would perfectly picture in their mind when listening to the song, just how Mundy explained it happened with Madonna, although for entirely different reasons. Finally, as we mentioned during our class discussion, I genuinely enjoyed the fact that the video told a story. We talked about how most videos nowadays do not tell a story like they used to in the past; however, this was one of the exceptions, and it was a really great one.
Macklemore, with the help of Skylar Grey and the rest of his crew, came back strong with the release of “Glorious”, the first released song of his newest album. Although not everyone might share this opinion, I feel like he definitely managed to leave behind the questionable, darker style he attempted to pull off on his previous, disappointing album and went back to being the Grammy worthy artist that he used to be. Macklemore, before the release of his new music, said he wanted to create fun, happy music, and that is exactly what he did. He managed to deliver a positive message to his listeners through a happy song and video, exactly the way he wanted to.