By Emily Garcia
American songwriter and singer, Mitsuki Miyawaki, Mitsuki Laycock, or just known as Mitski is well known for her song “My Love Mine All Mine” that you might've heard through TikToks or on the radio. She describes her own cross-cultural identity as half Japanese and half American, which is usually reflected in her own music. She would express her discomfort when calling herself either “Japanese American” or “Japanese”, she has described herself as “Asian American” but she would still call herself “American”. Mitski’s music expresses her own feelings that she has gone through in life or her own culture. She has released seven album’s her latest one that came out last year being called “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” being her most popular right now from “My Love Mine All Mine”. She has other hit songs from her other album “Be the Cowboy” made in 2018 with her two most popular songs from it called “Nobody” and “Washing Machine Heart”. Even if Mitski isn’t as big as other artists like Taylor Swift, her voice is in places you wouldn't expect even from her songs not being big. You also might’ve heard a song from “Everything Everywhere All at Once” called “This is a Life” played at the end of the movie, that was nominated for an Oscar in 2023.
Mitski herself plays multiple different instruments then just writing her songs and singing, she plays guitar, bass and piano. Before starting her career with her first album “Lush” being released in 2012, she had enrolled in Hunter College to study film. While enrolled, she decided to pursue music instead and had transferred to SUNY Purchase College, Conservatory of Music where she had studied for studio composition. During her junior year in the College, she had released her album “Lush” on January 31st, 2012 as this album was her first school project. Patrick Hyland had helped her release the album that year as well. A year later, in her senior year, she had released “Retired from Sad, New Career in Business” another album she had released as a project even featuring a 60-piece student orchestra. With each song released in the album, they were accompanied with a music video, having each video play a part with an ongoing story as this album is her only visual album. During 2020, “Strawberry Blond” had gotten popular on TikTok for the cottagecore community.
After graduating from SUNY Purchase College, she had served as a vocalist for the band Voice Coils and began on her other album that released on November 11th, 2014, “Bury me at Makeout Creek”. During April 7th, 2015, the album was reissued with four bonus tracks. Her album was raw, impulsive guitar, representing sonic departure from both the orchestra and some classical piano sounds from her first two albums. Though this album had failed to be a significant commercial success. This album was produced with Patrick Hyland, who also helped produce her second album. When working on this album, she had learned guitar. She even had one of her songs played in Cartoon Network’s shows “Adventure Time”. Having Marceline the Vampire Queen cover her song “Francis Forever” on the eighth season with the episode being called “The Music Hole”. You may have noticed that the album title is a quote from Milhouse from the Simpsons, being from the episode “Faith Off”.
Before releasing her fourth album, on December 22nd 2015, she had signed with Dead Oceans, later releasing her album “Puberty 2” on March 1st 2016. With this album, it had become a widespread acclaim for music critics as she was being praised from the emotional delivery and the themes in the album including longing, love, depression, alienation, and racial identity. Her song “Your Best American Girl”, the lyrics were about what Mitski wanted for a relationship with someone, but she was accepting that both her racial identity and upbringing were her main goal for this relationship. Most of her songs were autobiographical of her identity and what she wanted or is dealing with before as she wrote them through her songs. February 21, 2017, Pixies had announced Mitski’s first tour dates as she was a supporting act with them.
August 17, 2018, Mitski released her fifth album “Be the Cowboy” returning with piano being featured in her songs even with other instruments like horns and the guitar as they were the signature instruments for the album. This album received widespread acclaim with the music critics once again as it was ranked among the best albums of 2018. This album was Mitski’s first album being charted on the Billboard 200, even entering the charts in Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Mitski stated that she was experimenting in narrative and fiction for the album saying she was inspired by “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room”. She had said that the album is about her reconnecting with her own feelings as she had been isolating, she explains that when recording this, she didn’t have any feelings as this was a way to wake her up. During her tour, in September 2019, she had announced that it would be her last indefinitely talking about how she wanted to quit music completely and “find another life”. Though in early 2020, she changed her mind as she returned to music.
On October 4th, 2021, Mitski released a new single called “Working for the Knife” as she announced it on social media. After the release, the next day her song was the lead single to her 6th album “Laurel Hell”, even announcing the 2022 European and North American tour. This album was characterized with synth-pop, indie pop and electronic rock styles as Mitski stated that the title is a folk term. “Laurel Hell” peaked on the top ten in territories being in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which was marked as Mitski’s highest charting record from before. It became her first album to even reach top on the US Top Alternative charts and Rock album charts. The album songs were written before and during 2018 as she finished the album during COVID-19 lockdowns. She described the album as a “transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgement and ultimately, love”. She expressed that she had written the album as she needed love songs with actual real relationships that aren’t even power struggles even if we won them or lost them, even adding that songs could help forgive both others and herself. She created this album mostly just for herself as she was in a gray place. The album influences sounds of the 1980s as you can hear with some of these songs. Incorporating elements of new wave, pop, disco, even dance music included. It was gonna be a punk album before, but then to a country album, but she had settled with the album being an electronic form. Each song shows different ways of love, like “Stay Soft”, she sings about providing love for someone that isn’t even willing to give back any love. The music video for the song shows it much better with the lyrics following along with her as her love is retreated to a shell causing the past wounds. “The Only Heartbreaker” is a song where she grapples with her feelings as she’s not able to pull her own weight down in the relationship. Her baroque pop song, “Should’ve Been Me” is Mitski witnessing her lost attempt at love as she tries to find a solace copy of her own self.
Her most recent album and her seventh album “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” was released on September 15th, 2023. She called this album her “most American album” following the theme with love central lyrics being influenced by spaghetti Western soundtracks. As of today, “My Love Mine all Mine” is still her biggest hit from this album as it was released weeks later after the album even including a music video. As it peaked on TikTok, it made its way to the Billboard Hot 100 hit number 26, even hitting the UK Singles Chart reaching number 8. The lyrics of the song is Mitski saying that her love is the only thing that belongs to her asking for the Moon to hold onto her love once she dies so the Earth can shine back down with her love. Finally, with her public image she says that as an Asian-American woman, she feels pressure as she should be representing her own community. She’s not very active on social media these days as her account is run by her manager after leaving social media for good in 2019. With her view on the music industry, she felt like it was a supersaturated version of consumerism and while being in the industry, you have to be a product waiting to be bought, sold and consumed. Regretting using her actual name when releasing music as she feels like her own name no longer felt like it belonged to her anymore feeling like a foreigner. With her view on the fanbase, she stated that she has an uneasy relationship with her own fans being overwhelming with their relationship towards her and her own music. The “worshipful commentary” about her damaged her own self-image. During 2022 in an interview, she had described her own audience as “unrelenting”. Saying that everyone needed a piece of her, which made her overwhelmed as if hands were grabbing onto her. On February 2022, her manager had tweeted a statement to have fans to stop using their phones as they want to record at shows, as Mitski says that it makes her feel that her and her fans aren’t together, making her feel as if they only care for the content, instead of sharing the moment between them.
Even if we may not hear much from Mitski today as she’s not even active on any of her social medias, only having her manager post for her and post any promotions for anything. She’s still a sweet person as I’ve gone to her concert on September 28th, her last show from her tour this year. In her concert, her songs sounded much different then how they originally sound from the different instruments being used and how it may sound. The songs were more of a country theme, some may have cried to her songs before as her songs may connect with people from how similar it is to them, but these songs during the concert are much more cheerful as she shows the different choreography on stage. With the song “Heaven”, she dances with the light on stage as if it's like a person, but the light fades away as the person leaves her. It’s much different hearing these songs on stage and seeing her doing it live on stage, it brings a much different feeling than hearing these songs on speaker or anywhere. When hearing it from Mitski herself, it’s a whole new different feeling, seeing how she expresses her feelings with her own choreography to the thousands of people on stage. When talking to her fans, she tells us she loves us and she wished that this moment could last forever as it was her last show for a while. She knows that moments like that wouldn’t last forever and wished she kept them forever, but it’s really a part of life as we move on and die too. Before her last show that day, it was her birthday and she celebrated in Los Angeles. The show overall was amazing seeing her live is much different than seeing others tell you about it. Even with Mitski getting overwhelmed with stuff with her own music, fans or even having to deal with her feelings in relationships or on her own, she’s a sweet person, a creative person even writing her own songs.
コメント