All the time. I feel like I’m not taken seriously.
MITSKII 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.
More Mitski Quotes
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Maybe this is a made-up belief to preserve myself, but I do believe that everyone has a purpose, and my purpose is to put out music that means something.
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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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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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I think people don’t realize how little of being an artist is making art.
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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’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.
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As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.
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When I started making music, I was like, ‘This is something I can believe I was meant to do.’
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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’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 didn’t fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive,
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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 have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.
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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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I have my privileges, but I do feel like at every turn there is such resistance.
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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 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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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 think what’s hard for me is not that I don’t get downtime to chill, it’s that I don’t get time to make music.
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On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.
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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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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 feel like I’ve always wanted to live in one place and stay in one place, but I always end up choosing things that make me travel.
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My father was obsessed with folk music from around the world, and I think the countless artists who performed them are my biggest influences.
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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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Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.
MITSKI