mitski - the art of expression

Part 1

Mitsuki Miyawaki - also known as Mitski started writing music in 2010 with her first ever album, Lush in 2012. Since then, she has written and released 13 albums as of 2025.

bea from substack¹ started listening to mitski in 2022, as she need music that reflected her state of mind - as the life she had built crumbled around her. After joining high-school, her friend group of almost a decade fell apart, most of them blaming her for the whole situation. (It really wasn’t her fault guys, she was young and not doing well emotionally, so she made healthy decisions to make sure she’d be ok in the long run, and apparently that was selfish of her).

My point is, Mitski's music provides something for us as listeners that you don’t really find elsewhere. Songs like Drunk Walk Home, Your Best American Girl and My Body is Made of Crushed Little Stars tell us that its alright to be angry, at ourselves, and others and at the world. Songs like Bet on Losing Dogs, Class of 2013 and Last Words of a Shooting Star show us that being sad is natural, and that we don’t always have to pretend we're ok. In this day and age, where emotion is being categorised into neat little boxes, sanitised and/or condemned in modern media, Mitski’s refusal to let anyone control how she feels and expresses herself is a breath of fresh air.

In this post, I’m going to talk about some her her most famous and my personal favourite songs, and discuss what they can teach us about feeling. I’d like to preface this by stating that I am not:

1. A twenty something year old woman

2. Asian American

   or

3. Straight

“Why is that important?” you may ask. The short answer is, a lot of Mitski’s songs rely on a very specific context to be properly understood and/or related to. A prime example of this would be Your Best American girl, which discusses Mitski’s experiences being looked down upon due to her ethnicity and background. Mitski is an Asian American woman, and within the song, the mother of the man she loves disapproves of her because of the way she was raised. Since I lack pretty much every important piece of context and personal experience to be able to relate to this, I am not able to draw the comparisons that someone of that background could make.

With that out of the way, lets look at her saddest song, I Bet on Losing Dogs.

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I Bet on Losing Dogs

Within the title, we can already begin to see the key themes of this song. The act of betting isn’t in itself a negative thing, but losing has its consequences. To purposely place money on someone or something that is already losing is an act of defiance, desperation and denial. The song starts of quiet - like a lullaby sung to a loved one. “My baby, my baby, your my baby, say it to me” Only confirms this, the singer² communicating with her loved one or her baby - pleading them to say it back to her; to confirm her feelings. “Tell your baby that I’m your baby” adds more context to the story, alluding to the fact that the singer knows that her love doesn’t truly love her, but instead prefers another. Despite this, she continues to deny it, asking them to tell their love that they love her instead.

“I bet on losing dogs, i know they’re losing as I pay for my place” lets us know that the singer is aware that their relationship is failing, but still continues to ‘pay’ or give things up for this relationship. This constant loop of self-sacrificing and ultimately greed will continue to hurt her, and she knows this, but continues on in spite of it. By ‘purchasing seats’ “by the ring”, she gets up close to the ugly truth of the relationship, and allows herself some sort of twisted comfort by “[looking] in to their eyes when they are down” knowing that they too are hurting like she is, which only builds the dependence on each other. “I’ll be there on their side” contrasts this, showing that in the end, she still cares for them, and is rooting for them but not enough to stop “losing by their side.”

After all this, she asks her partner if they “will let [her] lose on losing dogs” - or continue this broken relationship until it ultimately falls apart. For the most part, this chorus is the same until the end, where she states that she “want[s] to feel it” - it being the relationship falling apart - as any feeling is better than letting them go. The chorus repeats once more, saying that “[she] always wants you when [she’s] finally fine.” This is a reference to the idea of an addiction - in this case, gambling that her relationship will end up healthy. She knows that she'll just go back to another broken love once she’s finally healed again, and by acknowledging this, we finally start to see her pull away from this idea of love and lean further into desperate companionship.

The last few lines of the song are an interesting flip in writing - no longer is the singer looking into her lovers eyes, but they now look into hers in a moment of intimacy³. The singer also finally lets onto what she wants from this relationship - “someone to watch [her] die.” Note the wording of ‘watch’ - she wants someone to be separate from, not to mourn or to be with, but to watch. In the end, love isn’t what she wanted from this relationship. She wanted someone to sit with, to watch and in turn watch her. She wanted companionship, from someone she would go back to time and time again. Someone who she knows will always love someone else, because it feels safe.

(did you get that?)⁴

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Happy

Happy is one of Mitski’s lesser known songs, but I feel as if it is the perfect follow up to I Bet on Losing Dogs, as it tackles similar themes, and even shares a reference. The song starts off strong, with the singer telling us that “Happy came to visit [her], he brought cookies on the way.” Already, we can see the singers difficult relationship with positive emotions - such as happiness - which alludes to feelings of depression and other mental health struggles. By bringing cookies, Happy provides for her, sustaining her in a period of time where she would have otherwise been alone.

As “[she poured him tea]” Happy tells her that “it will all be ok.” This kind of reassurance feels a little off putting to me, as Happy feels like an unusual occurrence - someone that the singer is not all too familiar with, but wants to know better, to build a deeper connection with. After he comforted her, “[She] told him [she’d] do anything to have him stay with [her].” Which implies he might not have stayed without her asking, which lets us know that Happy might not really care for her, at least not enough to stay with her for much longer.

After the singer begs Happy to stay, he does. He goes with her to the bedroom, “he laid [her] down and [she] felt happy come inside of [her].”⁵ Now lovely readers, this can be interpreted in two ways. No. 1, sex. No. 2, she felt the feeling of happiness. Either way, this is a really interesting way to talk about positive emotions whilst feeling depressed. By personifying happiness, Mitski gives the feeling she so desperately needs a voice, and she lets it whisper sweet nothings in her ear, as seen by ‘he laid me down and I felt happy.” She lets her ability to feel whole rest in the hands of a man, in the hands of some relationship in which she’s so clearly at a disadvantage. He doesn’t need her, but she so desperately needs him. But in the end… Actually I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the chorus, the singer asks Happy “if you're going, take the train.” She knows he’ll leave her, and that once again she’ll be alone. But yet she want to “hear it rumble, one last rumble,” to distract her from his departure, or perhaps the sound of the train tracks are a reminder of how his heart beat for her, even if it was just for a little while. She tells him “when you go, take this heart. I’ll make no more use of it when there’s no more you.” She truly loves him, enough to grant him the one thing that’s keeping her going, as she sees no more use in living if she can’t have him - if she can’t be Happy.

“I was in the bathroom, I didn't hear him leave,” suggests that he slipped away when she wasn’t looking, much like how happiness can leave quite unexpectedly. Once she realised, ‘[she] lock the door behind him,” which could symbolise her shutting herself out from the outside world, locking away any hope that she can meet Happy, or anyone positive again. After locking the door, she “turned around to see … the cookie wrappers and the empty cups of tea.” Happy left a mess for her to deal with - much like how once you no longer feel happy you’re left to clean up the emotional mess. Once the singer sees the state he left her and her place in, she “sighed and mumbled to [herself], ‘Again, I have to clean.’”

As the chorus repeats to finish off the song, we get the last piece of the story. The singer says to herself; “and if you're going, take the moon. Then, maybe I will see you; in the night, I'll see you.” She needs the guiding light of Happy, even if it’s just a reflection of something better. She needs the control and routine he gives her, just like the moon to the tide. She wants someone as broken and as fucked up as her, someone who seems so big but in the grand scheme of things is just as small as her.

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Class of 2013

Once again, I’m going to preface this with the same few warnings. I am not an Asian American woman who has been through college. I am a teenage girl from Australia who is only a quarter Asian. I know very little about my family’s culture, as they immigrated to Europe back in the 40s - 50s, before moving to Australia in the 60s - leaving a lot of their culture, traditions and even their first language behind. I am privileged, I have never had to worry about money, or not being able to pursue my dreams. I have never had to worry if I was good enough, or if I was liked enough because I’ve always known I could make it regardless. I know nothing of the pain Mitski speaks of in this song. That being said, I am going to try my best to explain this song.

Mitski⁶ starts off quiet, telling her mum that “[she’s] tired” and asking if its ok for her to “sleep in your house tonight?” Much like how after a nightmare, a child will go sleep with their mother - who will comfort them and protect them from any harm. She then asks, “Mom, is it alright if I stay for a year or two?” At this point in her life, Mitski is lost. She’s supposed to be pursuing her dream of music, but instead, she’s burning out, losing momentum and questioning where it all went wrong.

“Mom, I'll be quiet,” At this point, she’s lost her sense of self. She now sees herself as a burden, not wanting to distract others from their lives - lives that they’ve figured out while she’s been chasing her dream. She tells her mum that “It would be just to sleep at night,” as she thinks that by accepting defeat she is a failure - no longer worthy of being around. Continuing this theme, she tells her mum that “[she’ll] leave once [she] figures out how to pay for [her] own life too,” suggesting that she will follow in her mother’s footsteps rather than pursuing her own path and following her dreams.

This next part of the song never fails to get me to tear up. The pain in her voice as she sings, “Mom, would you wash my back, this once, and then we can forget.” This is hurting her, to admit to the person she respects that she is out of her league. She’s scared, of all her wasted potential, all that she has to live up to and the thought that in the end, despite everything she did, it wasn’t enough. She’s retreated into herself, and is trying to relieve the safety she felt as a child, being cared for by her mum in her most vulnerable state. Her mother washing her failures away, wiping away all the pain to bring her back to a simpler time. Mitski is willing to “leave what [she’s] chasing” behind, for all the “other girls to pursue” instead.

Defeated, she asks her Mother, “Mom, am I still young? Can I dream for a few months more?” She knows that eventually, she has to quit. She knows that she can’t keep doing this. But yet, she longs for more. Even after all this, she wants to keep dreaming. So, in true childlike fashion, she asks her mum. Asks her if she’s allowed to spend just a little bit more time living the life she always dreamed of.

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So yeah, that’s part one of mitski - the art of expression. I hope you enjoyed, and will stick around for whenever part two comes out. As always, I hope you’re having a great day- and if not - that this made it a little bit better.

1. that’s me by the way :P

2. I’m going to refer to the singer and mitski as different people, as for me, I don’t think they’re necessarily the same person. I think that mitksi takes her experiences and uses them to create new stories in the form of her music.

3. aka sex but i’m a minor and therefore not gonna touch that with a ten-foot pole.

4. the last few words of the song and also a great transition.

5. sex again so i’m gonna just awkwardly try and move away from that.

6. In this song, I think it’s pretty clear that Mitski is the person in the song, so I’m going to refer to her when I talk about the person in the song.