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Mitski

A singer and songwriter born in Japan and raised in thirteen countries, who recorded her first albums at Purchase College, made Be the Cowboy with the producer Patrick Hyland in 2018, and wrote "Washing Machine Heart".

Origin
Mie Prefecture, Japan; based in New York and Nashville
Years active
2012-present
Genres
indie rock, art pop
Labels
Double Double Whammy, Don Giovanni, Dead Oceans
Also known as
Mitski Miyawaki, Mitsuki Laycock

Purchase and Bury Me at Makeout Creek

Mitski Miyawaki, born Mitsuki Laycock on September 27, 1990 in Mie Prefecture, Japan, to a Japanese mother and a white American father, lived in 13 countries as a child because of her father's State Department career, went to high school in Alabama and Virginia, and graduated early in Ankara, Turkey. She studied film for a year at Hunter College and then took a Bachelor of Music at the Purchase College Conservatory in 2013. She had to renounce her Japanese citizenship at 22. Earlier she sang in a short-lived progressive metal band, Voice Coils. Her influences include her father's Smithsonian Folkways records and her mother's Japanese pop albums, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears and later Jeff Buckley, Bjork and Sheena Ringo; her stage movement draws on Butoh.

She self-released Lush (January 31, 2012) and Retired from Sad, New Career in Business (August 1, 2013, with a student orchestra) on Bandcamp. Bury Me at Makeout Creek (November 11, 2014, Double Double Whammy) was produced by Patrick Hyland, a collaborator since Purchase who has produced every album after Lush, and recorded mostly in houses and makeshift studios with a small group of friends. She told Interview Magazine in 2014 that she did not play guitar before this record. AllMusic gave it four and a half stars and Pitchfork's Ian Cohen 7.7, saying it still sounds like a breakthrough. "I Don't Smoke" was released as a single on September 29, 2014, and the album was reissued by Don Giovanni on April 7, 2015 and by Dead Oceans in 2016.

Puberty 2 and Be the Cowboy

Puberty 2 (June 17, 2016, Dead Oceans) was recorded over two weeks at Acme Studios in Westchester County, New York, with "Your Best American Girl" as lead single, and she toured with the Pixies in the US. Rolling Stone ranked that song 13th and Pitchfork seventh among the best songs of the 2010s. Be the Cowboy (August 17, 2018) was recorded at Retro City in Philadelphia, Gradwell House in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, and Red Bull in Los Angeles, 32:28 long, with fourteen songs all by Mitski. She experimented with narrative and fiction, inspired by a solo performer under a single spotlight, and most tracks have no layered vocals, aiming for a campy atmosphere of a person singing alone on stage. It reached number 52 on the Billboard 200, her first charting there, was certified platinum by the RIAA and was number one on the year-end lists of Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound and Vulture; it is rated 87 by Metacritic and was nominated for a Grammy for best recording package.

She opened North American dates of Lorde's Melodrama tour in 2018, performed "Two Slow Dancers" and "Nobody" on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that December, announced a last show indefinitely at Central Park SummerStage in 2019, saying she was not quitting music, and returned with Laurel Hell (February 4, 2022).

Since 2022

She played Glastonbury in June 2022. "This Is a Life", with Son Lux and David Byrne from Everything Everywhere All at Once, was nominated for the Academy Award for best original song in 2023. The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (September 15, 2023) was recorded at Bomb Shelter Studio in Nashville, and a concert film, Mitski: The Land, and a live album followed in October 2025. Her eighth album, Nothing's About to Happen to Me, came out on February 27, 2026, with "Where's My Phone?" as lead single; NME and the Guardian gave it five stars. The Guardian called her the best young songwriter in the US in 2022.

Setlist.fm logs 592 setlists, mostly in the US. She is known for her privacy and left social media in 2019, and asked fans in 2022 to stop filming shows. "Nobody" went viral on TikTok in 2021, and "Francis Forever" was covered by Olivia Olson as Marceline in Adventure Time.

Members

Records

Songs

St. Vincent

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Live performance archives

Sources

  1. Mitski, Wikipedia
  2. Mitski, Bandcamp
  3. Mitski, setlist.fm
  4. Mitski, First Love / Late Spring, Stereogum (2014-05-14)