In June 2019, the Japanese-American singer Mitski shattered her fanbase by claiming that her next show was the last one, “indefinitely.” Mitski had been releasing music for years at this point, gaining avid supporters and attention with her vulnerable songwriting. Her announcement was immediately met with thousands of worried supporters, wondering why their favorite singer was suddenly quitting – but Mitski was quick to address the commotion.
“Y’all, I’m not quitting music!” she wrote in a tweet dated a few weeks before her final show. “I’ve been on non-stop tour for over five years, I haven’t had a place to live during this time, & I sense that if I don’t step away soon, my self-worth/identity will start depending too much on staying in the game, in the constant churn.”
The songwriter’s clarification was concise and incredibly well-reasoned – she deserved a break due to the sheer amount of music she was putting out in such a short time frame – but her tweet wasn’t entirely true. She actually planned on quitting music forever.
“I was thinking that this would be the last show I would perform ever, and then I would quit and find another life,” she told RollingStone, an entertainment newspaper, in late 2021. The abandonment of her career filled her with a plethora of emotions, ranging from regret to relief. As she sings in one of her recent songs, “Working for the Knife,” “I cry at the start of every movie/ I guess ‘cause I wish I was making things too/ But I’m working for the knife.”
Not only does this song express her feelings on quitting music, but also on her fear of becoming a “product” of the music industry. “I felt it was shaving away my soul little by little,” she continued. “The music industry is this supersaturated version of consumerism. You are the product being consumed, bought, and sold.”
So, why did Mitski come back to music in 2022 with her new album, “Laurel Hell?” The condensed answer is that she contractually had to release it. She has complicated feelings on returning from her hiatus, but a small conciliation is that she is better taking care of herself throughout this process. “It’s really weird finding out that she’s not always enjoying putting out music, or at least, like, the toll it’s taking on her,” says a freshman at SMHS. “It kind of changes how I look at her music.”
Despite her reasons for coming back, Mitski’s new album is still incredibly well written and most definitely worth listening to. We can still appreciate her music while understanding some of the struggles that come with releasing it.