Music
The defiant singer-songwriter is ready to leap into stardom with her critically acclaimed album "Puberty 2" behind her and a major tour in front of her in this MAVENS.
During peak New York winters, sometimes you can pause long enough for a respite where you can hang your coat and breathe a cold sigh. Which is how I come to meet Mitski Miyawaki — the brilliant, one-woman musician and showstopping force of nature better known simply as Mitski — at Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s cozy grocery-cum-cafe Lella Alimentari one March evening.
The no-frills Italian spot, brimming with toys, books and colorful snacks nestled in every corner, is the perfect place to hide away for a conversation with one of music’s most thrilling artists. This isn’t our first time meeting, though. The last time I saw Mitski was in 2016, during another interview, a bit farther south, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, at the Raaka Chocolate Factory. When we met over tea and chocolate then, it was before her latest album, the heavy, head-splitting "Puberty 2," had dropped on Dead Oceans.
Last June isn’t that long ago, all things considering. But it feels like it’s been about a decade since we last met. “That’s so weird,” Mitski agrees. “This sounds like an exaggeration, but it feels like I can’t imagine my life before 'Puberty 2.' I feel like it has always been out. But maybe it’s because I wrote the music before it came out, so I was living with it before it was out in the world.”
"Puberty 2"’s serious riffs have their roots in Mitski’s teen years, when she first started dreaming up what these songs would become. “I knew there was something there, but I didn’t have the skills, or I didn’t have the experience then to turn that inspiration into something that was presentable,” she says. “I actually think it does come down to a technical level: Where I would have an idea of what I would want to do but not know how to do it yet. And so I figured I would put it away for a while.” That patience and persistence paid off, to say the least. From the pained musings in “Your Best American Girl” to the yearning “Once More to See You,” “Puberty 2”’s songs resonate with the kind of wisdom and wonder that comes from someone who, in their mid-20s, has already lived through several lifetimes of gratitude and loss alike.
From the outside, it appears that Mitski’s had a breakneck year of non-stop movement since "Puberty 2" dropped. She went from performing at DIY haunts like Bushwick, Brooklyn’s Palisades (RIP) to selling out Webster Hall practically within a year, and the album topped every 2016 year-end list in sight. But the truth is that Mitski has been honing on her craft for years, gradually tackling bigger hurdles, ambitions and venues in the process. “To the outside viewer, they maybe see me do one thing and then suddenly see me do something much bigger, but for me, I’ve been taking these steps little by little,” she says. “Kind of like that frog metaphor. Like, you toss a frog in boiling hot water and it’s like, ‘Oh my god it’s boiling.’ But if you slowly raise the temperature while it’s in it, it doesn’t understand that the water is getting hotter. And then it boils to death because it doesn’t realize it,” she laughs.
The temperature rising isn’t all that bad. For one thing, Mitski had the chance to return to Japan, where she lived for a while when she was younger, for the first time in over 10 years, this time to play some shows. The experience was revelatory, she says, but not in the way she was initially expecting. “Because I was away for so long, every time I would feel out of place in the U.S. or I would feel kind of nostalgic or homesick I would be like, ‘Oh, Japan is this magical, wonderful place where everything works out,” she says. “I mean, that’s an exaggeration but I went back and I was like, ‘Oh, no, wait; I’m still a foreigner here too. Oh wait, not everything is perfect here either.” She pauses, and adds: “I think I have a tendency to kind of romanticize things, and I realized I had done that once I went back to Japan. And I was like, ‘Oh, right. Real life happens here too.”
The Japan tour is a testament to Mitski’s steadily growing global fan base, too, which bears a healthy online presence. Earlier this year, Mitski tweeted about several fans who got tattoos informed by her songs. One of them is an image of a burning forest, directly inspired by "Puberty 2"’s fabulous closing track, “A Burning Hill.” Mitski says she admittedly feels flattered but a bit funny about the dedication. “I hope that I don’t end up being the Korn tattoo situation where kids get it as a teenager and like 10 years from then, it’s something they have to put foundation on to just cover up or like they have to explain it when they’re about to have sex,” she says. “I just hope to God that I don’t fuck up. I just hope I don’t end up being the stupid teenage tattoo that you regret, you know what I’m saying? It’s surreal. I don’t know how to feel about it. It’s not normal for me.”
Normal is an interesting word to throw around with Mitski. She doesn’t currently have a home base, because of touring so much (she’ll be touring for this album through the end of this year including two stops at Coachella and FYF, and will be back in New York with a sold-out show for the new venue Brooklyn Steel in April). By her own admission, she’s well-suited for this whirlwind lifestyle, though. “Maybe I’m very much an artist in that I don’t want to be living mundane, everyday life, paying taxes, getting pimples, not getting enough sleep, being in a bad relationship...that kind of stuff,” she says, smiling. “I don’t just want any of it. But the thing is: That’s life.”
Three great pieces of advice Mitski got and followed
Do everything.
"One of my composition teachers in college, she’s a contemporary classical composer, and she said the same thing. Do everything. Whether you can do it or not, say yes and you’ll figure it out. I think that’s truly fake it till you make it. And I think it’s a real skill to be able to present yourself and talk about yourself. That’s something that I didn’t realize, and that a lot of kids don’t realize. No one is going to talk you up. Like, you have to be your own salesperson. Especially in New York, where there are so many people who are good at doing that. And sometimes, people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. They just know how to present themselves.
"I think it’s a very cultural thing, too. It’s a very American thing. Japan, it’s not like that at all. Japan, if you boast, it makes you look bad. In the U.S., if you want to get any job, you have to be like I can do this and I can do that and that’s how you get a job. In Japan, you’re supposed to be apologizing every sentence. It’s just different. Well yes, [my professor says to] say yes to everything and figure it out. Cause often times you get gigs where you’re like I don’t know how to do that, but you just have to say yes and figure it out anyway. And then sometimes you fuck up but you learn something from that."
Think about whether something would matter in five years.
"My manager, Jeanette [Wall], said like two years ago. Or maybe a year ago. I was panicking about something and she was like, okay just think about whether it would matter in five years. And I was like you know what, in five years this shit won’t fucking matter. And that’s always good whenever I’m panicking about something. It can be as small as someone was mean to me on social media and I feel really bad. I always think about her saying would it matter in five years. And then the occasional thing where I think it will matter in five years, I’m like oh shit."
If you want something, make it yourself.
"I think I’ve said this elsewhere but my mother, whenever I wanted something, she’d be like why don’t you just make it? In retrospect I know it’s just because she didn’t feel like getting it for me. I’d be like can I get that toy and she’d be like why don’t you just make it for yourself? So in retrospect it wasn’t that deep, but that stuck with me because when I was starting out with music, I didn’t have the resources to record what I wanted to. I’d just look around and be like well how can I make it myself right now with what I have. It’s the same with putting on a show, it’s the same with tour. I don’t get hung up on what I don’t have, I just look at what I have and try to use that. And I think that’s come in handy. It’s definitely kept me from spending money I don’t need to spend. You gotta be scrappy."
