My father was obsessed with folk music from around the world, and I think the countless artists who performed them are my biggest influences.
MITSKIAs a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.
More Mitski Quotes
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It’s nice to know there’s a big world with many perspectives. I tend to get so stuck in my own small world easily, and going out into the world reminds me that I’m not the center of the world – in a good way.
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When you are a minority, it’s your job to bend, and when you love someone, you really want to make it work.
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Tour isn’t good for writing, but it’s good for inspiration.
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What’s important to me is that my songs can exist without any material anything. It’s very reflective of my ideology.
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It would actually feel forced or unnatural to try to do a different singing style or to try to change my sound completely.
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Whenever someone says they like something about my music.
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I’ve been very careful to always make clear that I am a real person. That’s why I’m on social media a lot.
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You can be heartbroken about a relationship but also, from it, realize you are you, and you’re okay with who you are or where you came from.
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I was a film major because, for some reason, I thought that that was a creative job that had more job opportunities. I don’t know what logic I was following, but that was my impression at the time.
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The whole ‘grunge-girl’ comparisons certainly are the easiest to pick out, and I appreciate that music journalists are rushed.
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I actually love the summer. When I went to Miami on tour, I was actually like, ‘I love this place.’
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I try to be regimented and try to stay healthy and work out and eat properly and go to sleep. And not get too caught up in the industry in my regular life, so I can save all my expression and energy for my art.
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Being an outsider at all times is both unhealthy and useful, because you become much more objective about things.
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I have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.
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Often I’ve had problems automatically bending to a lover’s will, becoming what I know they want me to be. Immediately, I learn all the music they love, listen to it, study it, instead of being like, ‘This is what I love!’
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I would love for Rivers Cuomo to listen to my music and see what he thinks.
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I don’t want to be elitist.
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I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.
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Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.
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A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t think of it as a job or a career – it was just something that was constant.
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I didn’t fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive,
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With solo shows, you have complete control over the set list. If you feel like you want to do something different or do a new song, you can just work it in. You can talk to the audience or not talk to the audience. There’s nothing that’s set.
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Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.
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Music was the one thing that was just mine, and no one could take it from me. I created it, dictated it, and it made me not able to let go of it.
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I really like The Cars. They’re just so over the top and super pop, but I don’t feel guilty. I’m proud of all the music I listen to.
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There’s this myth that women are supposed to compete with each other or something, or we’re supposed to hate each other, and that’s totally not productive.
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