I’m Japanese, and I’m also white American, and neither camp wants me in their camp.
MITSKIWhat I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.
More Mitski Quotes
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I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in ‘Teardrops On My Guitar,’ and she was like, ‘Isn’t this song great?’ And everyone was like, ‘Who’s Taylor Swift?’ And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.
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My personality’s very obsessive-compulsive. I tend to fixate a lot.
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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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I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn’t identify as that before I came here.
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I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn’t last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn’t have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.
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Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.
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I’d always been fascinated by death, which sounds so morbid. Especially being a woman trying to make music, I think there’s a sense that you’re never young enough, or your career is going to end soon.
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I was one of those girls people called ‘intense.’
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I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.
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In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I’d never stayed in one place for so long.
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I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.
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I don’t set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it’s about.
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I tend to not want to do that anymore. It’s not even that I don’t like it anymore: it’s that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.
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I hope to be a writer and musician my whole life, fingers crossed.
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If I have a song where I hit some really high notes, I want to try to bring in equivalently low notes somewhere in there.
MITSKI