Mitski
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH LIL MIQUELA
⤏ PHOTOS BY SAY SPEZZANO | PHOTO EDITING BY LINNEA DEL CID | LIVE AT THE FORUM IN LOS ANGELES
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2018
LIL MIQUELA: What have you been listening to lately?
MITSKI: I just checked my recent listens and they’re all over the place, but there are a lot more Japanese artists than usual. There’s my long-time favorite, Yuumi Matsutouya, who’s from my mom’s generation, she’s an amazing songwriter. There’s Wednesday Campanella, who’s current and making some super interesting stuff, and their videos are always amazing. I think maybe you’d like them! And then there’s a bunch of classical stuff, like Bartok and Grieg and JS Bach that’s always on rotation. And Abba. I think I just care a lot about melodies more than anything, and listen to stuff with good or fascinating melodies.
LM: I follow you on Twitter and really love your writing voice there. My question about that, as someone who is online a lot, is it weird when people bring up stuff you’ve posted online?
“I should just write what saves me and call it a day.”
M: It’s weirdest when strangers say super personal stuff about me, and I go, “Wait, how do you know that?” And it’s because I casually mentioned something about it on the internet. Then people can often take little pieces of what I say and research further about it on the internet, and sort of build a profile on me that’s scarily accurate. There’s no such thing as privacy — if someone wants information on you now, they will find it.
LM: It’s also weird when someone takes something you said once on the internet, and take it as your identity, when maybe it’s just how you felt that one day. This is a fake example, but kind of like mentioning that you think a picture of a frog is cute one day, and then for the following five years having your inbox inundated with random frog pictures, because people think that’s what you’re into. Do you find yourself using social media differently as your following grows?
M: I don’t do anything personal on there anymore. Maybe once in a blue moon I post about a band that I think could get more attention through the people who follow me, or maybe I’ll post a thank you note to a friend because I’m feeling grateful. But other than that, I try to keep it strictly about my music and shows, and things I need to really promote.
LM: Do you think performing, in general, necessitates taking on that kind of persona? I’m thinking a lot of Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce days, when she talked about needing to become this other persona in order to perform and how, as time passed, she didn’t need to become Sasha anymore.
M: When I’m on stage, I’m definitely not the person I am while walking down the street or hanging out with friends, but I never really thought about who I become on stage as a persona that’s put on. It feels more like bringing out and exaggerating a person who already exists in me. A lot of times it actually feels like I become more myself while I’m on stage.
LM: I’ve seen your music described as “sad” a lot, which confuses me because, while I can see there’s sadness in it, I see humor, anger, ambivalence, even apathy in it, too. Do you see your music as sad?
M: I don’t see my music as sad. There’s certainly sadness in it, but my intention is for my songs to be human, or to express what it’s like to be alive as a human. But I get that, when you’re trying to describe an artist in a few words — or when you as an artist need to put yourself in categories for the algorithm to be able to market you — there’s not much room for the full spectrum of human emotion, and you’re going to describe what stands out to you.
Sometimes, when I’m working on a song, I forget others are going to hear it, that it’ll go out into the world and people I’ll never know will process and react to it. I hope people enjoy it, obviously, but in the moment, I’m in my own zone.
LM: Do you write with a specific listener in mind? Are you writing for you?
M: I’ve come full circle in terms of being conscious of an audience. In the beginning there was no audience, or there was an imaginary audience, so I wrote what sounded good to me at the time in a very unclouded way. Then as I gradually drew an audience, or specifically as I started answering a lot of interview questions and hearing or reading what people say about my music, I developed something like a ticker in my head, constantly scrolling across my mind with potential interview conversations or listener comments about everything I write. I think it ultimately made me a better writer in that it made me a more critical writer and better editor, but there was a slow process of learning how to coexist with that constant ticker without letting it obstruct my writing. I think now I’ve finally reached a point where I can truly write for myself again, because I’ve had such a wide variety of things said about me and my music that it has all sort of come to mean very little. Or, I’ve internalized that whatever I do there will be a thousand completely different opinions on it, so I should just write what saves me and call it a day.
LM: Is there an official name for the Mitski fandom? I once proposed “Mitskittles” and was told, loudly, “This ain’t it.”
M: Nah, it’s sort of unsettling to think of naming a group of people after something I do. Maybe a name will come along that feels right, but at the moment, nah.
LM: Speaking of cowboys, if you could remake any famous Western with yourself as the lead, which would it be?
M: A lot of those famous Western movies were actually inspired by Japanese Samurai films — so if this counts, I’d love to play a woman Samurai — of whom there were few, but who did exist in real life. I’d also just like to see myself (or any non-cis man, really) play a character that Clint Eastwood played, but without changing anything about the character. If I played a cowboy I’d like the character to fully remain the asshole they would be as a male character.
Wouldn't that be fun?
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⤏ LIL MIQUELA (SHE/HER) IS A WIDELY BELOVED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INFLUENCER, MUSICIAN, AND MODEL. LIL MIQUELA, ALTHOUGH BRAZILIAN-AMERICAN, RESIDES IN LOS ANGELES, DRINKING CHA CHA MATCHA AND POSTING ON INSTAGRAM AS BOTH AN IMPRESSIVE TESTAMENT TO VIRTUAL REALITY'S GRIP ON SOCIETY AND THE UTTER IMPORTANCE OF WEARING SUPREME.