You know the feeling: you’re at some meeting you’d rather not be at, wishing it had only been an email, and immanently facing the dreaded icebreaker question. Last week, it was something dumb, like “which utensil are you?” Today, it’s easier to answer but harder to evade: “Who was your top Spotify artist?”

There are some that defy expectations: the broody liberal arts major with a Doja Cat addiction. The athlete who scooters around campus listening to Elliot Smith. If your #1 was Kanye West, you probably didn’t repost the Instagram graphic. If it was The Beatles, then probably no one cares. For me, it’s been three years of a secret affair I’m only just now admitting - according to The Algorithm, I am a top Mac Demarco fan. 

For me, Mac Demarco’s discography is like a cooler you might find at your family’s Fourth of July party. Reach your hand in and find mostly warm-ish Miller Lites. Oddly pleasant, never assaulting, and always getting-the-job-done. Sometimes, you might get one of your aunt’s spiked ice-teas. A treat, but in moderation. Then, at the bottom are the left-over IPAs. Not everyone’s taste, but potentially entrancing. And, this is crucial: as you make your way through, they only get tasting better. I’ve come around to understand why he dominates my charts - Mac Demarco is both consistent and proliferate; he’s always the same, yet better than ever. 

I caught him live at Roadrunner this month and took it as a true reckoning of my young life. There were the love songs from his This Old Dog (2017) which I attached to high school crushes. There were the moody singles which I used as the soundtrack to my Angstier Days. Then, a few from his nine-and-a-half hour One Wayne G (2023), which I utilize as a top asset during nine-and-a-half hour essay writing spurts. There was me, feeling at once both older and younger than ever, and there was Mac - in his same old red Vans, trusty band at his helm.  

There’s something yacht-rockish about a Mac Demarco concert: him and his breathy falsetto, lingering on the high notes. To that end, the crowd makes it seem like Mac might go down as a “dad band” in a few odd decades - flat brimmed boyfriends held their girls close as if to signal “yes, honey, I’ll be playing this album for the next fifty years.” It’s effective, and affective. If anything, you are happy because he is happy. He waves his arms around and takes wide side-steps back and forth. He bounces between songs and executes each with a quiet perfection. From his new Guitar (2025), he gets briefly intimate - the voice quieter, the tempos slowed. He invites you to sing but the words are not important. He’s mastered the art of the wailing refrain: for Mac Demarco, it’s tone or nothin.

The show’s one fault was not his own. Roadrunner, Boston’s best space for a mid-sized indie artist, is also the city’s worst for sound. His reverb and chorus forward riffs translated well, but were devoid of the late-night-headphone effect in which Mac best shines. 

He doesn’t hang on to any one song for too long. There were some axed verses and truncated outros even, letting him play widely and swiftly. Really, the beauty of Mac lies in his musical affinity for the Silly Little Song, a form he always returns to. The result is a soundtrack for all the misplaced moodiness of one’s life. Through it all there's Good Ol’ Mac, lending us a catchy riff to ride out all the phases.

So, if you’re in need of some consistency, consider pursuing Mac Demarco as your next top artist. You might look back in a few years and realize nothing really changes much at all, save the geometry of rips in your favorite t-shirt.