Of all the things and people I plan to include this month, none are more appropriate for International Women’s Day than Mitski.
Simply put, she is amazing.
I listened to her quite a lot last year, and my love only continues to grow.
As I previously wrote about Puberty 2: “Her album about struggling to find identity and happiness in the midst of profound anxiety, angst and depression obviously means very different things for her than it does for me, and yet she created this perfect sonic expression of that struggle that feels true to me.”
She’s my favorite songwriter right now. Her lyrics are strong and vulnerable, full of all the paradoxical juxtapositions that roil inside our hearts. Her songs are confident and fearful, hard and soft, tough and anxious. The work is rich with emotional depth, the kind that is so particular to her that it somehow impossibly feels particular to me, too.
Just the lyrics would be enough, but then she combines it with this remarkable sound, which is so full of strength and rage and tenderness and desperation.
I think the reason for the living death or sleepwalking I experience much of the time is that I try to uncomplicate myself, try to be only one or two things. I try to be simple and easy. Mitski reminds me to be all of the things. Her music helps me give myself that mental permission to explode in all of the different directions in which my heart pulls me.
