Mitski: The Story of A Body
Seven hundred words about why you should listen to my favourite artist.
Flailing hands, icy blue pants, a red lace bra, a dark and empty theatre, and green gloved hands stomping the wooden stage. This is the final image of “Working for the Knife “ by Mitski. The song acts as a glaring parallel to any millennial’s work-life and dying ambition, with Mitski performing through her body, her histrionically offbeat arms, and legs. And once you dive into her 9-year-old career, you realize that her body has always been there, almost as a muse for her delicate but fierce penmanship.
Who is Mitski
Japanese-American Mitski Miyawaki, or better known as simply Mitski, has been a household name in the Indie Rock scene ever since her debut years. Her lead single “Nobody” from her previous album Be The Cowboy (2018) embedded her position in modern-day music. Today, her name inspires thousands of young people to look within, pause at the inconsolable mess they encounter, and be proud nonetheless.
The ‘Lush’ Era
Emerging in 2012, where women were so far separated from the concept of commercialized rock music, her debut album Lush incorporated a ravenous stance on the human condition. Her music is best defined as gut-wrenching, uncomfortable, and thriving on her depictions of brokenness and the body.
For instance, her song “Wife” discusses the intricacies of feeling stuck in your womanhood. It talks about failed pregnancies and the lonesomeness that accompanies the pain. Biology acts as a thumping streamliner of Mitski’s music. In “Liquid Smooth”, she reduces herself to a “chemical” and her veins to “rivers.” In “Bag of Bones,” she recites the incomprehensible state of her life, hyper-focusing on her nails, hands, and the light that “illuminate(s) her pores,” in a grandiose attempt at escapism.
She surrounds her body with careful metaphors, constructing a worldview where her body is more than her organs: It becomes a medium of expression. “ Brand New City” lures us into the darkest crevices of Mitski’s creative inhibitions, where she reveals the intricacies of her body, her brain, her blood, and how it all seems to be failing. “ Abbey “, on the other hand, talks about hunger as an intrinsic quality, an odd kind of essentialism in practice.
The Ability to Yearn through Music
Her second album, Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, features some of her most ambitious work. “ Class of 2013 “ on face value begins as a conversation. Still, the pace with which it spirals into her deepest insecurities almost sounds impossible to pull off in 109 seconds-Mitski, however, continues to surprise.
Mitski yearns through her words, as nobody has ever longed before, and she does it with a thrashing void deep within the rosy verses. Her 2014 album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, introduces us to “Drunk Walk Home,” which can only be described as an exercise in reclamation. At the song reaches the climax, Mitski screams, not through the might of her lungs but her entire, collective anatomy.
As Mitski’s music matures, she writes more and more deeply about the confusion of growing up.
The Motif of the Body
In Puberty 2 (2016), Mitski grapples with transitioning relationships, bodies, and desires. In the video for “ Your Best American Girl, “ she devours her own hand as a couple passionately kisses in a parallel scene.
In her 2018 masterpiece Be The Cowboy, the process of repetition becomes a key motif. She relentlessly holds onto her feelings, with the opening track “ Geyser,” highlighting a stubborn prayer of love. With this album, Mitski finally weaponizes her loneliness. In “A Pearl, “ she is inquisitive, mean and entirely decisive. She is taking up space, and as she grows, her music grows with her.
The Beginning of ‘Laurel Hell’
After two years, her return to the indie music scene is as Mitski-esque as expected, with “Working For The Knife,” her latest single. The music video is theatrical and unapologetic in its wake. In her electric blue outfits, her tongue flat pressed onto a railing, Mitski is prepared for a fight-the fight to be irrevocably herself. She rarely falls short of being the harbinger of treacherous hunger that often co-exists with love, and here, she delivers in pure decadence.
Mitski describes the track as, “ It’s about going from being a kid with a dream to a grown-up with a job, and feeling that somewhere along the way you got left behind. It’s being confronted with a world that doesn’t seem to recognize your humanity and seeing no way out of it.”
This year she is stepping into a new phase of her music career, fuelled by years of maniacal fixation on the body. Her development is unhinged; it’s wild; it’s beautiful as ever. And it’s only getting bigger and bigger.
