If you’ve been following Mac DeMarco for a while, you’ll know that he’s about to drop his fourth solo record, Here Comes The Cowboy, in May.
And in anticipation of that, the first single ‘Nobody‘ landed earlier this month with a pretty jarring video clip, featuring Mac himself in full-blown lizard makeup, a robe, and a tidy Stetson cowboy hat.
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Once you get past the unnerving image of lizard cowboy Mac DeMarco, those with a keen eye might have noticed the credits – namely that the video was edited by “Mac and Robert Deniro.”
Surely not, we thought. How and why on Earth would 75-year-old multi-award-winning actor/producer/director Robert De Niro be editing a video clip where a bloke in full reptilian garb is wearing a crisp cowboy hat and choofing back a fat cigar?
To get to the bottom of it all, PEDESTRIAN.TV got on the phone with Mac DeMarco (mostly to chat about his upcoming record, and his love for helping people back up their cars) and we found out that you shouldn’t take everything he says as Canadian gospel.
“No, of course not,” Mac said when we put it to him about the credits. “That’s the kind of thing that I put on there where I assume that people…y’know, it’s funny now.”
Apparently, this isn’t the first time he’s taken the mickey out of promoting his own music and recalled back about a year ago when he released the video clip for ‘This Old Dog‘.
I remember the last record somebody wanted like a write-up for the synopsis or like an artist statement on my ‘This Old Dog’ video, which we were just walking around in dog masks.
I copied the bio from like ‘A Dog’s Purpose’, that movie that came out where I think somebody gets reincarnated as a dog.
And half of the news sites just took it–and one took it and realised that I’d copied it, and then they got all mad ‘cos they looked stupid and were like “you’re plagiarising!” and it’s like no I’m not, I just punked you. Like, shut up.
“Well, I’m glad that I came to you and asked about De Niro,” I replied. “Rather than just running it and looking like a complete idiot.”
“Oh no, no. I’m not talking about you,” Mac clarified. “I think you got it. No, no disrespect.”
The video for ‘Nobody‘, much like the rest of the upcoming album is jarring, uncomfortable, and weird as hell. If you peeped it above, you’ll have seen the depths that Mac DeMarco went to, to truly lean into a video concept he’s been trying to pin down for ages.
I think that’s what I was kinda trying to do with a lot of this record. Like, ‘Here Comes The Cowboy’ is a very jarring song as well. I like that. I’ve wanted to do makeup like that for a long time, and we’ve tried it a couple of times and it never really came out like quite to what I wanted it to be. So my friend Ryan did it this time and he killed it and yeah, it was cool.
It took about eight hours, which was cool. But yeah it was definitely a task. I couldn’t breathe through my nose that whole day, which is kind of insane. But it was cool, I had a good time.
Here Comes The Cowboy drops on May 10 – the first release from his label, Mac’s Record Label. Have a listen wherever you get your music.
