Everything ends, but what do endings even mean? From Spotify, I'm Cole Kishna and this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short

digestible episodes.

Today we conclude our serialized examination of Mac Miller's swimming in circles. Oh, So, you know, the the Over the course of this season we followed Mac Miller as he's traversed across various

emotional terrains throughout his journey on swimming in circles.

He's been sky high in the clouds, exhausted on the road,

and treading water in the middle of the ocean.

He's been up, he's been down, energized and drained, joyous and regretful.

Throughout his constant oscillations he came to find peace in each,

accepting that one cannot exist without the other,

harmonizing with the complementary balance of the universe.

And having now reached the end of Mac's final works,

it's time we take a broader look at swimming in circles and draw some overarching conclusions.

We'll start by examining the album artworks, look at various ways Matt connected these works,

and finally we'll get to hear directly from you, dissect listeners, sharing your thoughts and feelings about swimming in circles.

And so, for the final time this season let's dissect. And I got neighbors, they're more like strangers we could be.

As we've noted throughout this season, swimming feels like the culmination of Max's entire

musical career, props most poitantly coalesced in the album's penultimate track 2009.

Mac created a work that evoked the complete being of him, his path, and his life.

As such, the cover for swimming appears to include or allude to the covers of each of his six studio albums.

Photographed by Christian Weber, swimming's cover art finds Mac wearing a pink salmon-colored suit sitting barefoot at the bottom of a tall rectangular box, a small airplane window above him, revealing white clouds against a blue sky outside. The central vertical rectangle has the same placement as the vertical blue rectangle on the cover of Max debut studio album Blue Slide Park.

On this cover, the Vertical Blue Rectangle stands in for the Pittsburgh Park's iconic slide and also appears to be a waterfall.

Turns out the inspiration for the cover was an 8 year old's cran drawing.

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