Five Mitski lyrics that redefine love, loss and belonging
“The music I love, that has saved me, is the kind that really gets to the heart of myself and the person performing it,” Mitski once told The Guardian of her lyricism. She’s fiercely vulnerable in her work, making an art form out of getting into the guts of an emotion and finding exactly the right words to describe the sensation. When it comes to feelings of adoration, heartache, desperation and belonging, she’s made herself the poet laureate of the messy emotions attached to loving someone, losing someone or being utterly owned by someone.
Amongst other topics like race, gender or even the uncomfortable act of being a famous musician, Mitski handles love and loss with a distinct specificity. She’ll never be found borrowing an old cliche or being content to summarise a huge consuming feeling with just an odd phrase or two. Even though her work always feels personal and diaristic, she pours over her lyrics like a poet at work, trying again and again throughout her discography to describe a certain moment.
The very reason why love and heartbreak are the ruling emotions in art is because of their universality. No one gets through the world without experiencing it unless they’re content to live a life without even the slightest second of connection. But while they’re relatable, they’re also perhaps the most unique and personal experiences anyone could have; no two loves are the same, no two breakups are the same, and no two people would ever express quite what those two moments feel like in the same way.
Mitski’s magic is in her ability to know that and try anyway. She plays around in the interim moments dotted on the spectrum between belonging and abandonment, love and loss. In those instances, she paints a picture with vast poetic language and tiny, codified images. With a pen as sharp as a knife, she’s made a career at being able to stab right into the heart, finally articulating feelings her listeners might not have been able to explain as she utterly redefines the emotions again and again.
Five Mitski lyrics that redefine love, loss and belonging:
‘I’m Your Man’
“You’re an angel, I’m a dog
Or you’re a dog and I’m your man
You believe me like a god
I’ll destroy you like I am“
For so many people, heartbreak comes along with the horrible feeling that all this time, you’ve had the person you love up on some god-like pedestal. When that comes crumbling down, it’s a bitter pill to swallow that perhaps they weren’t so perfect all along.
But on ‘I’m Your Man’, Mitski gives voice to the other side, considering how horrible the view is from up there. “You believe me like a god / I’ll betray you like a man,” she sings elsewhere as a warning that no mortal can ever live up to the glorified and worshipped position love too often puts them in.
‘It Should’ve Been Me’
“When I saw the girl looked just like me
And it broke my heart
The lengths you went to hold me
To get to have me“
Once again, Mitski is never content with going for the typical. While hoards of love songs have been written about the pain of the person you love moving on, ‘It Should’ve Been Me’ is an oddly jovial track about watching an ex-lover desperately try and find you in other people.
It’s so rare to find a love song that navigates blame or guilt with such nuance, but even rarer to find that nuance balanced with ease. As the instrumental dances around, Mitski turns what would be some people’s worst nightmare into a surprisingly upbeat track where she looks back at her ex with a sense of sort of pity in her weak apology; “I’m sorry it should’ve been me.”
‘My Love Mine All Mine’
“Nothing in the world belongs to me
But my love mine, all mine, all mine”
We think that we give love, and we lose love. But according to Mitski, we are love. In this ballad, she suggests that no matter what we do, we can never truly be without love because it lives within us all. Instead, she writes a love song with no other party involved, ridding the genre of the need for a partner.
It’s the musical equivalent of the saying, “I know love exists because I’m real and I’m full of it.” As she repeats the words “mine, all mine,” she claws back ownership of her own adoration again and again.
‘I Don’t Smoke’
“You can lean on my arm
As you break my heart”
But on the flip side, Mitski has penned some of the most devastating heartbreak songs ever heard. She nails the feeling of utter desperation that so often comes with the loss of a love, with the way that so many people so back again and again for more pain, just for some more time with a person. In ‘I Don’t Smoke’, she articulates that so viscerally you can hear the pleading in her words.
“If you need to be mean / Be mean to me / I can take it and put it inside of me,” she says, offering herself up like a martyr simply to be able to stay on course for her cause of love.
‘Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart’
“Maybe when you tell your friends
You can tell them what you saw in me
And not how I turned out to be”
What about when the dust is settled, and the very worst of the loss is over? There’s a moment when it comes to gathering up the pieces, putting yourself together and attempting to move forward. But on ‘Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart’, Mitski seems to be looking towards her lost love as if seeking out instructions for what to do or how to handle the fact that it ended and perhaps she was to blame. “Now here I lay as I wonder about you / Would you just tell me what I’m meant to do?” she sings, calling out for a path to follow.
But in this choral lyric, she accepts the end to a certain degree, owning up to the fact that she wasn’t the partner she wanted to be and hoping maybe she’ll be better in their memory than she was in their reality.
