MITSKI The Searcher
Mitski Miyawaki stands motionless as the music starts, her arms at her sides, hands open and arched outward with palms facing down as if she’s about to levitate. The drums and keyboards of “Nobody”—the disco-tinged single from her latest album, Be the Cowboy—start to percolate. This is a genuine dance anthem, full of defiant self-pity and longing, but she does not so much as shift her balance from her knee-locked pose. As the music swells her voice gains in intensity, her hands begin rising slowly, first in front of her as if bracing for impact, then rising even more as if pleading. As she repeats the song’s title over and over as the music fades, her hands cover her eyes, palms facing outward. In this instant, surrounded by her bandmates and an audience that roars in approval once the last note ends, she is as alone as the character in her song.
It’s December 21, a few weeks after she completed a sold out fall tour, including four consecutive nights at Brooklyn Steel, and Mitski is the musical guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Before the night is over, she’ll play one more song, the achingly somber “Two Slow Dancers,” and the crowd will roar again. This is her moment—selling out 1,800-capacity rooms, profiles in GQ, an interview on The Daily Show—and it all would have been more or less unthinkable even a year ago, back when she was best known for clever tweets and “Your Best American Girl,” the roaring single from 2016’s Puberty 2. Perhaps it’s appropriate that in an era defined by macro debates over political and cultural divisions that a 28-year-old who hails from nowhere and everywhere has managed to capture the zeitgeist—at least part of it—by making music that focuses on the micro of the individual. Finishing up her year in front of a national television audience is a fitting conclusion, one that many artists would use for a moment of reflection, but Mitski is no such artist. She’s too busy thinking about what comes next.
“I’ve been talking about it obsessively with most of my friends,” she admits during a rare day off. “Because the natural progression starts feeling like, ‘Bigger venues, more records sold, more press, more accolades.’ And I’m at a point where I’ve been very lucky that I can make a normal, non-musician working person’s living from music, and I have to think about what will be enough now. What is the point of me doing this now that I can make a living and do what I want? Because it doesn’t feel like making more money is the point to me. So
