Meg Mac was weeks away from releasing the first single off her third full-length when she pulled the plug. “I ended up throwing the whole album out and stopping the release of the single,” she tells Apple Music. “It just didn’t feel right.”
Admitting she had a meltdown, Mac moved from Sydney to a cottage in the small town of Burrawang in the New South Wales Southern Highlands to take stock. There, she returned to the original voice memos of the songs she’d recorded for the discarded LP, the magic of which she felt had been lost in their finished form. Some she rewrote, but for the most part, Mac started again as she struggled to make sense of her situation.
With production work handled largely by LA duo The Donuts, the singer emerged from Burrawang with a record she could stand behind, one that merges her dark soul- and R&B-indebted sound with some of her most confessional lyrics to date. “I feel really happy that I chose to make this album,” she says. “Because it could have not existed, and I love it so much, and I don’t have any regrets about it. No matter what happens, I feel good about this album.” Here, Mac breaks down the 10 tracks that make up Matter Of Time.
“Is It Worth Being Sad”
“That’s literally [about] running away to the country and not talking to anyone. I asked everyone to leave me alone for a bit. It was just very stressful to try and focus on this new thing but be getting emails about other songs and the old album, and I was in this transition phase. I was in such a mess, and it was the first moment where I was like, is it worth being sad about? I was stuck in the pity, feeling sorry for myself, and that was the first moment where I felt empowered by the struggle. It’s the first song that I wrote that was new for the album, and from there I was able to write [more]. It was the first step of the new era.”
“Only Love”
“I love music and it’s my whole life, but it’s caused me this torment and pain. The things we love the most are also the things that bring you the stress or the negativity. The two sides of the coin.”
“Understand”
“When I think about the album, I’m like, it’s totally my fault. I’m the one who let it get to a week before single release. I tried to stop it, but I didn’t try hard enough. But also, I was thinking if you were in my situation, you would probably understand. And thinking that, different things have happened in my life in the past and I wish people understood me more, but then also being like, I could have been a lot more understanding. If we all understood each other, things would go better.”
“Something In The Water”
“It’s like when you get that feeling that something’s off, or something’s not right, and people aren’t quite being what you thought they were. There’s this foreboding feeling. That was one I’d written quite a while ago, and it got neglected—no one picked up on it being good, but I was like, ‘This song’s really good!’ And then The Donuts really transformed it. All the BVs [backing vocals], those male choir moments, I didn’t write those. They sent them through. That’s a special one.”
“Letter”
“[It’s about] people that aren’t in your life anymore, but you wish they were. I get the urge sometimes—I wish I could reach out to them or write them an email. There’s that feeling of unfinished business—it didn’t have a resolution to the relationship or friendship. If I knew how to say what I was feeling, maybe they’d still be my friend. That was the song I worked the hardest on. That was one I didn’t co-write with anyone.”
“On Your Mind”
“It’s crazy to hear the original. What I sent The Donuts was just piano and me singing, and they took out all the piano, chopped up the vocals, and in the chorus, they took out my lead vocal, and it was just the harmonies. I just love it. The verses, I’m singing like crazy, then the choruses are so hypnotic. It’s probably the weirdest song on the album.”
“Matter Of Time”
“This is the only song that made it from the old album kind of untouched. A few of the other songs I worked on and tore apart, but this one we just did some additional production. I’m singing I’m not happy, then I’m gonna snap, then it’s like, I’m gonna make it amazing. Like I want to make something better. And then I’m like, ‘How long will it take for my silence to break?’ I’m about to snap. And that is so weird because then I did snap, and I was like, ‘No, I have to make something amazing.’ Everything I said in that song happened. It’s just so weird. I didn’t know that as I was writing it.”
“Don’t You Cry”
“It was a song I found on my phone. When I heard it, it kind of broke my heart how sad it was. Especially the chorus: ‘Ooh, where’d you go?’ It sounds like painful crying. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing anymore and who I was. I think that’s why the voice memo was originally 20 minutes long—it felt good to sing that and let it out.”
“Lifesaver”
“I was so sad again. Breaking my own heart with all the songs! This was one that was on the old album, but I didn’t really feel like where it went was true, so I went back to the original voice memo. And it’s just that moment where you’re desperate and are like, ‘Give me a sign. Give me guidance.’ That moment of surrender and ‘I need help.’”
“Head On The Pillow”
“That was a new one I wrote in Burrawang. You know when everything’s swirling around, and you’re like, I just want to have a nap. The dread of looking at emails or people calling me, I couldn’t deal with it. I just really liked to put my head on the pillow and pretend that everything was fine.”