September 29th, 2024. 23:51pm

Mitski Miyawaki is a Japanese American singer-songwriter. Due to her dad’s job, she lived in around 13 different countries around the world before going to undergraduate college in New York. She started songwriting at 17. She had always loved music since it allowed for a common thread to exist wherever she went. At 20, after 2 years of studying film, she shifted to Suny Purchase Conservatory. There, she was a quiet but dedicated student. She recorded 2 studio albums and even enlistested the college’s 60 person orchestra for some songs. Her music is incredible, to say the least. She writes in a way that it feels like the melody is stitched to the music. Her lyrics are honest enough to express a familiar anguish and at the same time, impersonal to an extent that adds an eerie and off putting vibe. She has said in interviews that she writes songs that can be sung alone or be played on a simple instrument like the guitar. Her music conveyed the despair of an extended adolescence and feelings of not having a stable place in the world. Recently her music has been about being a worn out adult and the monotonous dread that necessarily comes with adulthood. Decidedly unsexy stuff, but oh so very good. Electric guitars screech, delicately crafted chord progressions do their work in the background, she sings in her characteristically controlled voice and I ascend. It all works. A mesmerising potion of mismatched elements. Her words will stick with you, etching themselves in the corners of your brain and pop up as unexpected but welcome guests. It’s the result of years of hard work, a unique ethos and an unrelenting commitment to creative control of only what you can do. Her passion genuinely inspires me. I’m not sure if I am as single minded as her but I hope I can embody some of the spirit she carries. “