Mitski facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Mitski
Mitski performing in 2022
Background information
Birth name	Mitsuki Laycock
Born	(1990-09-27) September 27, 1990 (age 33) Mie Prefecture, Japan
Origin	New York City, U.S.
Genres	Indie rock folk rock art pop
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter musician
Instruments	Vocals guitar bass piano
Years active	2012–present
Labels	Dead Oceans Don Giovanni Double Double Whammy

Mitski Miyawaki (born Mitsuki Laycock; September 27, 1990) is an American singer and songwriter. She self-released her first two albums, Lush (2012), and Retired from Sad, New Career in Business (2013), while studying studio composition at Purchase College's Conservatory of Music. The albums were originally made as her senior project. Her third studio album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, was released in 2014 on the label Double Double Whammy.

Mitski signed with Dead Oceans in 2015 and released Puberty 2 (2016), Be the Cowboy (2018), and Laurel Hell (2022), the last of which made the top ten in several countries. In 2022, The Guardian dubbed her the "best young songwriter" in the United States. That same year, she co-wrote "This Is a Life" for the film Everything Everywhere All at Once, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. Her seventh studio album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, was released in 2023. The album's third single, "My Love Mine All Mine", became Mitski's first song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.

Early life

Mitski Miyawaki was born Mitsuki Laycock on September 27, 1990, in Mie Prefecture, Japan to a White American father and a Japanese mother. Her first language was Japanese. She moved frequently while growing up due to her father's job at the United States Department of State, living in Turkey, China, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo before settling in the United States. She sang in a choir in high school and was 18 when she wrote her first song on the piano.

Career

2012–2014: Lush; Retired from Sad, New Career in Business; and Bury Me at Makeout Creek

After enrolling at Hunter College to study film, Mitski decided to pursue music instead and transferred to SUNY Purchase College's Conservatory of Music, where she studied studio composition. During her time at Purchase, she recorded and self-released her piano-based first and second albums, Lush (2012) and Retired from Sad, New Career in Business (2013), as student projects. While there, Mitski met Patrick Hyland, who has produced her albums after Lush. In 2013, she collaborated with indie-rock artist Mike Rasimas, providing vocals for the original song Ego and a cover of "Nightcall" by Kavinsky.

After graduating, she served as the vocalist for the short-lived prog-metal band Voice Coils and began work on her third studio album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, which was released on November 11, 2014, through Double Double Whammy. The album was reissued with four bonus tracks on April 7, 2015, through Don Giovanni Records. The album's raw, impulsive guitar represented a sonic departure from the orchestral and classical piano sounds of her first two albums. It garnered acclaim from numerous publications.

2015–2017: Puberty 2

On December 22, 2015, Mitski signed with Dead Oceans. She announced her fourth studio album, Puberty 2, on March 1, 2016, and shared the lead single, "Your Best American Girl". She released another single, "Happy", before the release of the album on June 17. Produced by Hyland, the album was recorded over two weeks at Acme Studios in Westchester County, New York. The album received widespread acclaim from music critics. "Your Best American Girl" was named the 13th best song of the 2010s by Rolling Stone.

In a 2016 episode of the Cartoon Network show Adventure Time, her song "Francis Forever" was covered by Olivia Olson as the character Marceline the Vampire Queen.

On February 21, 2017, the Pixies announced U.S. tour dates with Mitski as a supporting act. On May 1, a compilation album consisting of 100 songs by various artists titled Our First 100 Days was released. It includes Mitski's cover of One Direction's song "Fireproof". The compilation aims to raise funds for organizations that support causes threatened by Donald Trump's proposed policies. Mitski played a cover of the song in 2015, but that version has since been taken down. ..... On October 4, 2017, Lorde announced that Mitski would open for her on some dates on her Melodrama World Tour. On November 1, a short film starring Mitski called Sitting was released.

Mitski performing at a concert in Seattle in October 2018.

2018–2019: Be the Cowboy

On April 20, 2018, Mitski teamed up with the experimental band Xiu Xiu on the song "Between the Breaths" for the soundtrack of the sci-fi comedy film How to Talk to Girls at Parties, based on the short story of the same name.

On May 14, 2018, Mitski opened pre-orders for her fifth studio album, Be the Cowboy, and released the lead single, "Geyser", with an accompanying music video. The second single and its video, "Nobody", was released on June 26, 2018, and the third and final single to precede the album, "Two Slow Dancers", was released on August 9 alongside a lyric video. Be the Cowboy was released on August 17, through Dead Oceans. It was critically acclaimed and named the album of the year by Pitchfork, Vulture and Consequence of Sound.

On tour in 2019, Mitski began incorporating choreography into her live performances inspired by Butoh, a form of dance theater developed in post-war Japan, in which "performers draw on chaotic internal emotions but depict them with precise, repetitive gestures." The approach reflected her wish to "give audiences something new" on her second headlining tour since Be the Cowboy's release, as well as a desire "to develop her own, idiosyncratic ways of maintaining a grip on an audience," since she'd learned "that the jumping around onstage, getting everyone pumped up, doesn’t come naturally to me." Mitski worked with performance artist Monica Mirabile to devise the tour's "highly stylized, sometimes unsettling" movements. Butoh influenced choreography was also used in her music video for "Working for the Knife".

In September 2019 at the final performance of her Be the Cowboy Tour in Central Park, Mitski announced that it would be her last indefinitely. She later talked about how she planned to quit music completely and "find another life." By early 2020, Mitski had changed her mind and decided to return to music, partly because she owed her label another album and partly for herself. She described making the decision to continue, "What it came down to was, ‘I have to do this even though it hurts me, because I love ... This is who I am. … I’m going to keep getting hurt, and I’m still going to do it, because this is the only thing I can do.’ "

2020–2022: Laurel Hell

Mitski performing in 2022, incorporating Butoh-inspired choreography.

Mitski shared her new song, "Cop Car", in January 2020, a never-released piece from the soundtrack of The Turning. She was featured in the song "Susie Save Your Love" from Allie X's album, Cape God, released in February 2020.

On October 29, 2020, it was announced that Mitski would provide the soundtrack to the graphic novel This Is Where We Fall. The sci-fi Western story written by Chris Miskiewicz and Vincent Kings "unpacks themes of theology, death, and the afterlife". Of the project, Mitski said, "It was exciting to make a soundtrack for a comic book, It allowed me to work outside of my usual songwriting form and try to approach it like a score, but without any of the cues that come with working alongside a moving image, which ended up being both freeing and challenging. I hope the end result helps to immerse you in the story!" A country song called "The Baddy Man" was released as the first preview from the soundtrack on March 5, 2021. Z2 Comics released the album on cassette with the standard hardcover novel on May 5, 2021. A limited-edition deluxe vinyl was also released. At the moment, Z2 has no plans to put the soundtrack on streaming services.

On October 4, 2021, Mitski announced on her social media that she would be releasing a new single, "Working for the Knife", the next day as the lead single to her upcoming sixth studio album. The song would later be named the 7th best song of 2021 by Pitchfork. Soon after the song's release, Mitski announced her 2022 European and North American tour. She followed it up with "The Only Heartbreaker" on November 9, 2021. The same day, Mitski announced her sixth studio album, Laurel Hell, would be released just before her European and North American tour, called Laurel Hell Tour, on February 4, 2022. On December 7, 2021, "Heat Lightning" was released as the third single from the album. On January 12, 2022, "Love Me More" followed as the fourth single from Laurel Hell. In March 2022, "The Only Heartbreaker" peaked at number-one on the Billboard Adult Alternative Airplay chart. On March 4, 2022, Mitski was announced as one of the performers for the Glastonbury Festival, scheduled for June 22–26, 2022.

On April 19, 2022, Mitski's cover of "Glide", from the soundtrack of All About Lily Chou Chou, was released on streaming services. The song was previously available as a bonus track on physical versions of Laurel Hell and was used in the 2022 film After Yang. Mitski appears on the song "This Is a Life" from the soundtrack for the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once. The song also features David Byrne and Son Lux, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2023.

2023–present: The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We

On July 23, 2023, Mitski announced her seventh studio album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, with information on the first single, "Bug Like an Angel", which was released on July 26. The news was revealed via a voice memo she recorded at Bomb Shelter Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, where the album was recorded. The voice memo was sent out to all subscribers of her newsletter. The following two singles from the album, "Heaven" and "Star", were released on August 23, with the former premiering on BBC Radio 1.

Mitski also announced six concert dates set to take place in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Mitski described these dates as "not a full-blown tour", but intimate and small enough to preview the album without elaborate stage production. She later added nineteen tour dates set to take place in the US in 2024.

In November 2023, it was announced that Mitski was attached to write lyrics and music for a Broadway adaptation of the 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit.

Musical style

Mitski's lyrics often explore her anxieties and have been coined by some as 'sad indie girl music,' a category many women who write emotional lyrics are put into. E. Alex Jung described her as "an artist whose music feels like being ushered into a private opera house of melodrama" with lyrics full of "roiling fury, destructive impulses, humiliation, longing, heartache, and hunger". Angie Martoccio of Rolling Stone described her earlier albums as a "wry running commentary on twentysomething angst, raw desire, and often unrequited love". Lucy Dacus, a singer-songwriter who has at times opened for Mitski, described her music as "really visceral ... She’s connected to a part in herself that wants to scream. Maybe you don’t live in a space where you can scream, or maybe you don’t have the words for what has happened to you. Mitski provides a space for that."

Similarly, Mitski has described her music as a place where people "can put all of their feelings, their ugliness, that doesn’t have a place in their own lives."

Personal life

Mitski describes her cross-cultural identity as "half Japanese, half American but not fully either", a feeling that is often reflected in her music, which occasionally discusses issues of belonging. Mitski has expressed discomfort with calling herself "Japanese American" or "Japanese", and although she has described herself as "Asian American", she would rather "just say she's American".

Since 2020, Mitski has resided in Nashville, Tennessee. She is vegan, likes horror films, and has two pet cats.

Discography

• Lush (2012)
• Retired from Sad, New Career in Business (2013)
• Bury Me at Makeout Creek (2014)
• Puberty 2 (2016)
• Be the Cowboy (2018)
• Laurel Hell (2022)
• The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (2023)

Awards and nominations

See also

In Spanish: Mitski para niños