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.
MITSKII think it’s our responsibility as artists to not only fight for our art but fight for the communities that are the reason we’re able to continue making art, especially since, in Brooklyn’s case, we as artists somehow made it ‘cool’ enough for the bigger money-making industries to start taking over.
More Mitski Quotes
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You can never learn enough about music.
MITSKI -
I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.
MITSKI -
When you’re young is the one time when you get to indulge in being morose and take yourself most seriously.
MITSKI -
Then you start to realise, ‘Oh, I’m bending a lot,’ and they’re just standing there existing, and I’m bending around them. But you can’t blame them: they don’t realise it; that’s just how they already existed. It’s hard.
MITSKI -
Whenever I’ve tried to ingratiate myself to an existing community, I tend to give too much, to become whatever it is they want me to be. It’s something I do automatically – I’ve learnt to immediately adapt.
MITSKI -
I have my privileges, but I do feel like at every turn there is such resistance.
MITSKI -
I’m Japanese, and I’m also white American, and neither camp wants me in their camp.
MITSKI -
I have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.
MITSKI -
I tend to kind of try to use what’s in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don’t already have.
MITSKI -
I don’t think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.
MITSKI -
Miyazaki movies were what I was raised on. I’ve watched them since I was very young, and I’ve been greatly shaped by them.
MITSKI -
Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.
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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.
MITSKI -
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.
MITSKI -
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