Mitski isn't private, you just aren't listening. 

so often i see people magnify mitski to be this flawless deity whose music is above us, which has never made sense to me since her lyrics are all so… human 😭?? she’s had to restate that so many times that i think the glorification is really an injustice to her. loved this video!!

it sucks to see that most of the mitski fans like her for all the wrong reasons, despite her being such a genuine artist who actually cares about the art

mitskis art is so human. she captures human emotion in such raw, vulnerable way.

Even if she was private... so what?! She is a person that delimits the knowledge of her, that's amazing and really priveleged to keep in a world where our personas and identities are marketable. She doesn't owe nothing to no one lmao.

Mitski is one of the last true musical artists left, in my opinion. She's so delightfully weird, I love her so much 😅 truly underrated.

There's this video on YT of Mitski performing Love Me More live, she's bathed in blue light, entering from the back of the stage and you just start hearing the crowd go WILD for her. So much, that you can hear this girl screaming at the top of her lungs for half the song as if she's seeing god, which is such an interesting juxtaposition to Mitski singing such a raw song with so much human emotion, she almost looks alone on that stage. It kind of feels like performance art. Anyway, loved your video and your insight as an artist made this so personal. i'm a new fan for sure.

Class of 2013 and my bodys made of crushed little stars are my favourite songs of hers. Mitski makes such direct songs. They're short but incredibly immense.

I've been a fan of Mitski for a while, and for a long time, I just listening to her music on Spotify and that was that. Only recently I switched to RU-vid music, and in doing so, I began to see comments about her/ what her community perception is. I was surprised to see people saw her as private! Her songs--while not necessarily literally about her--are very intimate, vulnerable, and personal. I have a hunch (no actual research and not too much thought--hence hunch) that artists labelled as "private" are those that attempt to avoid interacting with their fans directly. For example, some artists might do Q/A's, respond to comments, and embrace fan jokes. Not doing so is "being private." But to me, it's not about privacy, it's about what you prioritize pursuing, and maintaining mental health.

Mitski's music is like noone else's. I found it around 15yo and have become a big fan since appreciating her music more and more as i'm getting older. She saved me 🙏 i love her personality and how rawly human she is in the interwievs.

i've been listening to her stuff for a few years and have found it very real and raw. i didn't interact with the fandom but the reverence and "SHE CREATED EVERYTHING" some people have for her is so odd to me. she's a human, we don't know her, we know her music. and it's beautiful. but you have to draw a line.

My body is made of crushed little stars has such a innate symbolism for me. I have lived through an abusive situation that made me a broken, suicidal, depressed person, and I believe the only thing that kept me alive is work. I wanted to leave, I wanted to be happy and successful, I wanted love but I couldn’t find it, and being a workaholic obsessive hopeful mess at least gave me goals. Mundanity was the only thing that allowed me to be grounded, the only thing I could do to survive. I love the way this song basks in the mundane, seeing it as absurd, but powerful.

Mitski is a real artist. She's so delightfully weird, I love her soooo much 🥰 truly underrated.

i've been a fan of mitski since before her commercial or critical acclaim. in high school i would listen to every single one of her albums on loop every day because her music truly expressed the depression and heartbreak i was going through. the yearning she expresses in her music is unlike no other artist. her relationship with her fans is so interesting, because she loves them so much but she also hates being so publicly perceived. the constant push and pull between her love of music and her desire to be alone and at peace. i feel very happy for her that she's been able to find that balance, and i genuinely have thought she was going to quit music at least three times during the time i've been following her career, especially after hearing I Guess. i am so grateful she isn't quitting, and i hope the people who have found her through tiktok and social media will continue to help her feel comfortable with sharing such deep parts of herself. and if I had the money to pay mitski to carol in my home... god! her christmas carols on youtube are gorgeously haunting

A lovely look into an often overlooked aspect of music. The best guitarist I know is an accountant. Sometimes it’s enough to be boring by day and adventurous by night.

I’m so interested by how the music industry reflects the greater economy. There are a very small number of people taking most of the attention and money, while the vast majority are struggling to garner any attention or cover basic costs.

The excerpt you read out loud at 13:46 kind of blew my mind. This recurring idea is spewed a lot surrounding the legacies behind music artists, that "a good, interesting music artist is a tortured music artist", and I had always thought that it was a coincidence, that tortured music artists aren't good just because of what they go through. but hearing a similar message coming from someone whose music I listen to really tears down the fourth wall for me. I just thought that all of those people spewing this sentiment were just speculating about the creative process and success behind these handful of artists who just to happen to struggle in one way or another, but to hear from a real source that sometimes they chase those situations that compromise their well-being just for "the song" feels so transparent that it's off-putting. I wonder who first spread this idea that artists must struggle, and how it became so pervasive that actual artists began pursuing their own suffering because they believed in it so much, that it would enrich their perspective for a song or two. from the sound of it, it doesn't feel like the music industry cares about artists all that much if that's the kind of environment that's being fostered in those spaces. I admire mitski so much, and it concerns but also saddens me that a young mitski ever believed she had to inflict any kind of emotional pain upon herself in order to appear interesting in her music and to her fans. I respect her music so deeply, I view her body of work as almost a home of all her past emotions and experiences immortalized. that's also just why I appreciate any form of art in general, it gives you a chance to take a feeling, maybe even a feeling that seems so invisible that it doesn't feel like your suffering even holds a place in reality, and put it somewhere where you can prove that it's real and see it for yourself. it gives you permission to expand upon it, elaborate it on it, and then move on from it. sometimes it feels like such a disservice to move on from a stage of your life without properly addressing it with yourself, like an "all of that pain and I can't talk about it" kind of feeling. even when you legitimately don't identify with it anymore, you think about who you were when you were immersed in all of it, and you want to validate yourself with a tribute to who you were and what you saw, even if it's a version that doesn't exist quite the same way. mitski's discography feels exactly like that. it's like a house for all of her past grievances that have their own place, that deserve recognition even if she can't remember how that time in her life felt like anymore, and I just find that so very rich and remarkable. I remember in one interview, she talked about how she would build up on certain emotions that were usually triggered from something rather mundane by setting a fictional scene or using characters to convey those emotions in a presentable way for her music. she used Me and My Husband as an example of this, how she used the archetype of a lonely housewife to expand upon a certain feeling she associates with or imposes on that character referenced from a less fashionable situation and real person who was there to feel it. when she had said that in her interview, she just reassured her own brilliance in my mind, and I found great solace in that statement. even if an emotion or experience looks trivial, it's still worth the art and the act of dressing-up. I love the idea of immortalizing periods in your life within art because it pays tribute to yourself and what you've endured, big or small, loud or incredibly quiet. I'm bringing all of this up, and I'm finally wrapping up my comment thank god, to look back on her music and think about how some of those emotions could have been sought after for the purpose of the art itself, and how it alarms me. I wonder what songs she was referring to when she said this, and if they were even released. still, I think that even if some of that pain was pursued rather than an organic experience, it captures a certain headspace in her life where she believed that was required of her to be a good artist. it still unintentionally captures a separate kind of unique, sidestepped pain, even if that wasn't the focal point of the product to begin with. whether that pain was felt in the moment or something to be gained for a product, it still captures a picture, doesn't it? I have a lot of admiration for mitski and her candor, and I hope she knows that it's not the suffering in her songs that makes her interesting, it's what she makes of it and how she transforms it into something that is undeniably hers, that cannot be replicated by anyone else because they don't share her mind or her hands. I still have not found any music quite like mitski's. I hope she continues to immortalize visceral images and stories from her life, and also that she now knows that a lot of us would rather she be boring and happy than "interesting" but in a hole, but we all know her talent is undeniable. it can never be retracted by a change in tune, that is hers to own. I know she particularly grappled with that dilemma while producing her past album, how she wanted to produce more uplifting melodies without jeopardizing the respect and mutual understanding she's gained from her listeners who still wanted more somber tracks. I think this next upcoming album will finally reject this sentiment and be a tangible process of healing, one that perhaps a young mitski needed to hear in order to learn what she knows now. this does make me wonder about how many artists from the past and present believed in this toxic idea, though. how many iconic artists led with this mantra that they must suffer to succeed? I wonder how many of these artists that we regarded as "tortured, but talented" were also in on it, too. it really does speak to the fact that you can be lost and fragmented, as long as it's consumable. i can only hope more artists stop lusting after their own self-degradation for a product as we all grow wiser. edit: shit ton of grammatical errors lmao

@10:48 - Having a solid day job has made being a musician SO MUCH more enjoyable for me. I'm able to worry about the art and not worry about how much I'm gonna make from a show.

I'm on the fence with this... of course I want my listeners to connect with me as a person, and for other artists to know it's totally normal to have a job (or jobs) to fund your art. but when interviewers ask me what my "dailly routine" looks like or if I have a job outside of music... I still don't feel comfortable answering. because I don't want anyone to show up at my job (or for my coworkers to find out I make music). what's ironic is, one of my coworkers is actively a musician in a well-known local band. out of respect for his privacy I don't ask any questions about the music, I actually hadn't heard of his band til he mentioned it in passing, but I just want to respect the boundary between artists in the art world vs artists in the real world... idk if this makes sense. but I'm kinda just treating him how I'd want people to treat me. also, the nature of my job is confidential anyway, I wouldn't be able to talk about it in detail even if I wanted to. and now I feel like Hannah Montana, keeping secrets in both worlds.

I feel like people tend to forget that artists are human too. This "fame" makes it seem like they're a different entity, when really they're just unique humans(cuz everyone is unique) with the same kinds of worries or struggles others may have. Mitski saying that people would be disappointed to meet her is actually so sad, the expectations artists have to bear are insane. People need to realize that at the end, artists are humans too. I appreciate Mistki whether its for her music or for her overall actual personality, all she's being is human, and that's quite normal id say. My point is, that no one should even have the right to be "disappointed" on knowing or meeting her, because she's human like every other person out there!!!! ☺💖

wow its weird i love in an age where even the obscure artists I'm unsure ppl know about even have videos of so much footage about them. I loved every second of this and realize Mitski is actually kinda far from obscure even though nobody else in my circles listen to her. :/

The conclusion was very comforting as a fellow musician/creative. I’m not (yet) a fan of Mitski but you might have converted me.

She does have, I think, more boundaries than the average celebrity. They’re more than reasonable but I think people are unaccustomed with singers being like that. And it’s something I appreciate, because honestly I think she’s right if I met her I would probably be disappointed. That’s not saying she’s a bad person irl or anything like that, just that my vision of her in my mind is probably not super accurate, and frankly it does not have to be accurate to be an amazing artistic influence in my life.

This video was executed perfectly. A viewpoint that many people don’t try to understand about Mitski 💗

im so glad someones finally bringing up all the interviews! ive watched so many and a lot of her live shows. ive dug deep just to see her in all aspects of music. its freedom.

I love this perspective. We’re so used to people, especially people with an audience, being “on” all the time, that Mitski’s relaxed approched to self-promotion and branding seems lacking, when it’s more than people were expected to do ten, fifteen years ago. We should resist the multiples of labor (unpaid labor in fact!) that are getting attached to creative jobs in general.

absolutely love this vid but!!!!!! your title says miski and i cant move past it😭

a really interesting video! i'm graduating high school this year and art has always been a really big part of my life, and i'm thinking of basically giving it up seriously. i originally did it for financial purposes but the more i read into things and the more i listened to this video i agree that there's also a lot of freedom when you don't make creativity your full time job. your voice is so nice to listen to and i was able to finish my sister's bday card while learning a lot more, great video again!!

I like your message, it’s something I tell my friends. I love to paint & make music but I don’t wanna be a struggling artist. I rather work my day job & create when I have time , bc at the end of the day it is my hobby , something that makes me happy, whenever it does start to make me more money…then I’ll drop the day job . Until then I’ll do both frl

this is so important for so many of her fans to hear! she speaks so openly about what her music means and her opinions on the industry and people just gloss over it to project their own views onto it as fact

It would be fine if mitski quits honestly, her songs will still be streamed for years to come, then she could sit back in the ordinary life again. Theres so many criticism on her fans putting her on a pedestal lately, i mostly think of them as jokes when i see them.. am i understanding right that this is part of the problem? if not, then i dont get all this at all. I enjoyed the quotes on this video though :)

This is so relatable as someone in the fashion industry (or trying to be lol) I have fully accepted that I cant really be an artsy fashion designer and make a living, I will try to get a technical job in the fashion industry at some big shitty fashion brand and then be creative when I get home from work lol.

Having a full time day job and being a professional artist in honestly something I think is mostly reserved for type-A neurotypicals, in the long run. I know people with neurodivergences who do or did it, and usually they either transition to being full time creatives who have to deal with artistic constraints and deadlines - or they flame out, hard.

the working artist part is SO relatable even though i'm still a student, the struggle is REAL

i saw mitski in 2015 when she opened for elvis depressedly and she is realest person i’ve ever met.

ugh i love mitski! her music is great, her personality is great, she’s authentic, too. i relate to her a lot

I really enjoyed this realistic and yet optimistic outlook on what being an artist (for me illustrator) looks like for the majority of people. This somehow gave me a little hope for my future and that things will be okay, even with struggle.

mitski has been my special interest for almost 3 years now! i’m so glad she is getting the love she deserved

as an artist i loved this video!! please keep making videos amplifying the artists actual voices- they so often get lost in the excitement of the music

I never saw such a perfect green screen

This is a great take! Currently, I'm just doing music on the side and seeing where that goes. I'm a content writer by day, and I'm so grateful that I get to be creative in my day job. All the love and respect for Mitski. I hope she finds happiness 🔮❤️

as someone who's probably going to have a desk job at an arts organization/non profit in the future to give myself enough money to fund my music/films, i really appreciate you including that in your video. i think i fall into the rare category of artists who would get insanely burnt out if i did art full time. i'm currently going to school for music and film and i've noticed stigma with not wanting to describe the job you have outside of art started almost immediately in freshman year. the music industry specifically has soooo much stigma surrounding needing to have a day job, i hope one day we're eventually able to talk/joke about the jobs we have outside of music as openly as actors. this was such a good video on mitski!! i've been such a big fan of her's since i saw her in 2019, i really enjoyed getting to hear your thoughts on her art and how they relate to you

I’m a 15 year old and 3 years ago I got into Mitskis music and went to her concert and now I am absolutely in love with her work but she’s so misunderstood and her songs are always categorized wrong and stereotyped by different apps

this is the exact video i needed to see right now. thank you so much

How dare her act like a normal human being. All celebrities must be romanticized versions of us 🤬🤬

while this is a very sweet video and it's nice to hear your perspective.... generally... all people mean when they say mitski is "private" is that she used to have a lot of social media that she would post casually on, making goofy jokes and whatnot, but then she got popular, took a hiatus, and came back and her social media is all more professional now. not a huge deal, and totally fine, she's just not shitposting about Spiderman on Tumblr anymore.

I decided to just dive headlong into singing/songwriting. I used to have a part-time job at a Panera years ago, but the pandemic and getting laid off gave me a good excuse to pursue music fulltime. I busk and record my sessions almost every day that I can, and it seems like I'm BARELY able to make ends meet. People have recommended that I secure a part-time job, but the truth is, I already spend about 8 hours every day performing/reviewing/editing and more hours practicing/writing/composing, then I need to set aside time to cook myself meals, go shopping, unwind. The truth is, I am nowhere near as experienced in the industry as Mitski is, but I think another truth is that everyone will go through different experiences in their music journey. Mitski describes freedom to be a double-edged sword, but to me, it is the ultimate validation that I have personal value and there's nothing more valuable in the world than the idea that you "think" you matter. Even though I am skipping meals or waiving insurance, if I were to choose between music or a decent living, I'd pick music in a heartbeat. I think one of the biggest problem with this industry is that the nature of it being consumerist means that musicians (esp those who are starting off) undervalue themselves. It has reached such a plateau that professional-level musicians are afraid to ask for $20 dollars for an hour-long live show, which perpetuates this stigma among non-musicians that music isn't the sum of thousands of hours of work. I want to believe things will get better if we just wait a few decades (if we introduce universal basic income, if there are more proactive programs to financially assist artists, better rates for streaming services, etc.), but right now, the best we can do is grind it out and hope that we can forward a better culture around the arts.

Just found your channel and I feel like I've found a kindred spirit. I've actually done an analysis of an artist named Hwasa who I love for the same reasons you love Mitski, especially because she's a KPOP artist and that industry is (possibly) the most image driven and inauthentic. Sincerity and REAL authenticity has really gone out of style in music so when I find an artist who is holding onto those qualities my respect for them is immense. Thank you for this video. Loving music and not chasing a lifestyle is important because creating true art actually makes a difference in the world (at least I think so). Keep doing what you're doing 🫡

SHE. PLAYED. RIBS. I fell in love with Mitski through the Melodrama tour, too :D And I rarely go to shows, so it was such a lucky coincidence! Thanks for the insight into working artist life and for sharing those quotes. I feel informed & appreciative of you & Mitski both

absolutely loved listening to you speak about mitski

This was a really lovely and chill video to watch, and hearing your perspective was refreshing, thank you!

Also. As a big Mitski fan who has talked to a lot of Mitski fans, the younger you are, the more they try to idealize Mitski. Older Mitski fans have gone past that. (By old/young I mean how long they’ve been fans in relation to their age.)

i love the way you explain your thoughts!

Your take on this is so refreshing and your voice is so calming. Sending love 🩷

such a good video, thank you for sharing :]

Not too depressing 😌 great perspective! From one musician to another, this was what I needed to hear today.

So many great thoughts 😊💝

this was super interesting! thank u for condensing ur insights for the the rest of us who don't read as many interviews :)

Loving your vibe, thanks for this! 👏🏻 Hadn't heard of Mitski, am checking her out now, nice.

my first time watching your channel, and I just want to say that you look and sound like a gracious princess from some old movie or something! idk your whole presence and aura is really warm and soothing. I don't even listen to mitski or know anything about her, I literally pressed on this vid by accident, but I'm hooked now and I'm having a great time. I guess it's time to listen to mitski now 😅

Never heard of Mitski but for some reason I watched this whole video.

this is a great video, i don't know much about mitski's music but this applies to my favorite artist and it was great to see the perspective of a musician :)

my body's made of crushed little stars is one of my favorite mitski songs too, its so underrated! also, great video

lovedd this vid👹💗

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, so interesting

I love these kinds of videos :) very nice

Very well said! I appreciate the insight greatly

you opened my eyes on something very very important for me

i love this video so much

Thank u so much for this vídeo ❤️

Yeah she does say a lot

Happy to find your page, great content and perspective! Subbed :)

fantastic video thanks for sharing

This is great, thanks

I love this video

this video felt like such a safe space

She kinda sounded like Lana del Rey talking about music in the first interview

idk who mistki is and this is the first video I'm seeing from you but hi!

💫

real

heres my question, how do i hold a day job as a person in the industry? im expected to tour but to tour is to leave for months on end. how the fuck do i keep a job doing that

Ok. Listen to TLIIASAW

Lana working at the waffle house 💕 queen