Songfacts®:

• On this mirage-like song, Mac Miller is talking about living "in the basement" of despondency. Though stuck in his bad habits, he has the hope that someday someone will save him. Then, after years of negativity, he will finally "see" what is real and what is fake.
• Producer Jon Brion (Kanye West, Fiona Apple) completed the song along with the rest of the tracks on Circles. He based his work on conversations the two shared before Miller's death in September 2018. Brion told Apple Music about this cry for help.
  
  "You can ascribe all sorts of things to his sense of knowing," Brion said. "But people are going to have that experience because he was already self-aware and was unafraid of expressing it. But beyond that lyrical wonder of honesty, the melody just made me cry."
• Fans noticed harmonies on "I Can See" from a female voice that sounded very much like Ariana Grande. After first collaborating on a cover of "Baby It's Cold Outside" in 2012, the pair dated for two years before splitting in May 2018. When asked by The New York Times if Grande's vocals feature on the track, Brion responded: "I believe there are."
  
  The producer added that he did not know anything about the songstress' involvement. "That was a pre-existing track. There were a few songs the family gave me that he'd been working on independently that I thought fit thematically with what we had worked on. 'I Can See' was one of those... I played some things on those tracks to make them feel like the others, but those vocals were already there. It wasn't like an executive decision or anything."