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In today’s music scene, there is great diversity in feminine perspectives. One’s music collection is never complete unless it contains a wailing woman, a party girl and some delightful combination of both. Some sing of love, of course. Some sing of other things, like their daily lives or their more emotionally complex experiences. A special few fall into all these categories, displaying their emotional range with tales of romantic woe in addition to manic expressions of joy. One such artist is Japanese-American indie pop singer Mitski, who has a wonderful talent for imbuing the deepest emotion in her music, which transcends genre and effortlessly touches hearts.
Mitski comes from a music conservatory background, which is where she released her first two albums, “Lush” (2012) and “Retired from Happy, New Career in Business” (2013). She has released seven albums in total and her musical sound has evolved tremendously since her two debut releases.
“Class of 2013” is a particularly good example of Mitski’s ability to imbue raw emotion into her music through her interesting techniques and vulnerability. The song is a letter to the artist’s mother, begging for the barest amounts of comfort. It begins timidly, giving the impression that she is afraid to inconvenience her mother in any way, but as the song reaches its climax in the third verse, Mitski nearly screams her line begging her mother to wash her back “this once, and then we can forget,” before more reservedly promising to “leave what I’m chasing for the other girls to pursue.” These lines feel like a desperate plea that this sad singing child knows will not be fulfilled. Mitski knows, in her promise to give up and her admittance that her mother wants to forget any tender moments, that her attempts at gaining her mother’s support are nearly futile. The variations from Mitski’s yelling in the third verse to her very soft opening and closing verses increases the emotional pull of the song not only because the mood matches the lyrics, but also because the raw and less-than-polished nature of the yelling shows Mitski’s lack of fear of abnormality and her commitment to being vulnerable in her art.
Mitski’s later albums, such as “Laurel Hell” (2022) and the most recent, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We” (2023) are more clearly cohesive than her earlier works. “Laurel Hell,” specifically, has a mood of feeling overworked and wasted as the artist enters her thirties. In my opinion, this theme was perfectly embodied by the album’s first single, “Working for the Knife,” in which she describes her creative stagnation in the line, “I cry at the start of every movie … ‘cause I wish I was making things too,” and her fear of becoming irrelevant as she grows older in, “I always knew the world moves on; I just didn’t know it would go without me,” and, “I used to think I’d be done by 20; now at 29, the road ahead appears the same”. Even the title phrase repeated throughout the song, “working for the knife,” evokes the image of someone working only towards their own death. As a teenager in 2022 struggling with my own senioritis-based stagnation and radical disillusionment with capitalism, the term, “working for the knife,” resonated with me in ways Mitski probably didn’t have in mind. But her emotional investment in her art invites numerous interpretations; the music belongs truly to anyone who wishes to identify with it, regardless of whether or not they get the “correct” message out of it.
Even people who aren’t fans probably know Mitski’s music; she is an artist who pops up all over popular media. A cover of her song “Francis Forever” was done by the character Marceline in an episode of “Adventure Time.” Mitski songs frequently make the rounds in TikTok videos. At the moment, in light of the very recent “The Land is Inhospitable but So Are We” album release, the catchy and soothing, “My Love Mine All Mine,” has been a trending audio on TikTok. Thank goodness for her little cameos in the world, or else her music would not have found its place so close to my heart, maintaining a regular position through my headphones. Mitski’s artistry is deeply memorable and worthy of the marks it has left on the world.