50 Fun Facts About Mitski

In Mitski's Two Slow Dancers, two old lovers reunite and reflect in which setting from their youth?

A school gymnasium is where the pair dance, trying to relive a moment they cannot get back. Mitski said they know they will have to go home and return to their own lives.

Mitski's I Don't Smoke comes from Bury Me at Makeout Creek, an album title quoting which animated series?

The Simpsons supplied it: the title is a quote from the episode Faith Off, spoken after Milhouse is hit by a truck he took for a dog.

In My Love Mine All Mine, Mitski asks which heavenly body to keep her love after she dies?

The Moon is asked to hold her love and shine it back down to Earth. The song became Mitski's first Billboard Hot 100 entry, peaking at number 26 in 2023.

Mitski's 2015 cover of Fireproof, her reply to indie-rock elitism about young girls' pop, is a song by which boy band?

One Direction's fans were the point: Mitski said her cover answered people who dismiss music loved mostly by young girls.

Which former US president put Mitski's The Only Heartbreaker on his annual list of favorite songs for 2021?

Barack Obama shares a list of favorite songs every year. The Only Heartbreaker also gave Mitski her first chart number one, on US adult alternative radio.

Mitski said the solfege syllables she sings in Washing Machine Heart began as a failed attempt to mention which food?

Miso soup was the goal: she tried to fit the notes mi and so into the song and failed. Her producer has said the track nearly missed the album altogether.

In February 2022 Mitski asked concert fans to stop doing what, saying it made her feel consumed as content?

Filming shows on phones, she wrote, made her feel as though she and the crowd were not there together when she looked out and met a screen.

Which city did Mitski move to around 2019, partly to get away from costly, competitive New York and Los Angeles?

Nashville became home after years of shuffling between sublets, hotels and Airbnbs, and she recorded her 2023 album at the city's Bomb Shelter studio.

Which Mitski song does Marceline the Vampire Queen sing in the Adventure Time episode The Music Hole?

Francis Forever was voiced by Olivia Olson as Marceline. A storyboard artist suggested the song when the show's team had no songwriter on hand.

Mitski was announced in 2023 as songwriter for a Broadway musical of which novel, already a hit Netflix series?

The Queen's Gambit, Walter Tevis's 1983 novel about a chess prodigy, is the source. Mitski was attached to write both the lyrics and the music.

Two Slow Dancers holds which place in the running order of Mitski's 2018 album Be the Cowboy?

The closing track of fourteen, it was also the third and final single released ahead of the album and, at almost four minutes, the longest song on it.

Which pop star took Mitski along as an opening act on the North American leg of a 2018 arena tour?

Lorde named Mitski, Tove Styrke and Run the Jewels as support for her Melodrama World Tour, and Mitski played the North American dates in March and April 2018.

Which singer joins Mitski on This Is a Life, the Oscar-nominated song from Everything Everywhere All at Once?

David Byrne duets with her and shares the music credit with her and Ryan Lott of Son Lux. The song lost the 2023 Oscar to Naatu Naatu from RRR.

Mitski lived in 13 countries as a child because her father worked for which arm of the US government?

The State Department kept the family moving, with a new school almost every year. Mitski has said it left her with a permanent sense of being a foreigner and an outsider.

Mitski's 'last show indefinitely', in September 2019, took place at SummerStage in which New York green space?

Central Park hosted the show, with Lucy Dacus opening. Mitski later admitted she had planned to quit music afterwards and find another life.

Mitski, born Mitsuki Laycock, later adopted her mother's last name, which is what?

Miyawaki is her mother's family name. She has said she regrets releasing music under her own name, because it stopped feeling as if it belonged to her.

After college, Mitski taught herself which instrument, which then drove her album Bury Me at Makeout Creek?

Guitar replaced the piano and student players of her first two records. With no college ensemble to call on, she learned it herself and made a louder, rawer album.

Mitski self-released her first two albums as student projects while studying composition at which New York school?

Purchase College, part of the State University of New York, let her record in its conservatory studios. She had transferred there after a year at Hunter College in Manhattan.

In the 2021 TikTok trend set to Mitski's Nobody, users filmed themselves doing what as the song swelled?

Running away from the camera was the joke, usually under on-screen text naming an awkward situation the user wanted to escape. The trend arrived three years after the song's release.

Which comeback single did Mitski write in late 2019 while confronting her decision to quit music?

Working for the Knife uses its blade as a metaphor for the pressure to keep producing music. It came out in October 2021 as her first major release after the hiatus.

Mitski performed Two Slow Dancers and Nobody on which late-night show in December 2018?

Jimmy Kimmel Live! booked her four months after Be the Cowboy came out, by which point several publications had named it their album of the year.

I Don't Smoke is among 21 songs on Mitski's 2025 live album The Land, recorded at the Fox Theatre in which city?

Atlanta hosted the three nights in September 2024 that became both the live album and a concert movie shown in 630 cinemas across 30 countries.

Mitski's I Don't Smoke first appeared in 2014 on which small label, founded by two friends from her college?

Double Double Whammy was started by Dave Benton and Mike Caridi to put out tapes by their own band and other local acts. Its 2014 albums by Mitski and Frankie Cosmos were both breakouts.

Mitski wrote Nobody on a toy piano from Toys R Us while spending Christmas time in which Asian city?

Kuala Lumpur was where she bought the toy and wrote the tune, composing the music first and sketching the opening words afterwards.

Which avant-garde dance form from post-war Japan inspired the choreography Mitski added to her concerts?

Butoh entered her shows after she began working with the performance artist Monica Mirabile, who went on to choreograph her 2024 tour.

Which veteran alternative rock band took Mitski out as its supporting act on US tour dates in late 2017?

Pixies announced the dates in February 2017. One reviewer had already compared the crashing loud passages of Your Best American Girl to the band's own sound.

Mitski sang lead in Voice Coils, a short-lived New York band that played which unlikely genre?

Prog metal was the sound of Voice Coils, which lasted from 2013 to 2015. Mitski stepped back from the band as her own third album took off.

Which collaborator, whom Mitski met at college, has produced every one of her albums since her debut, Lush?

Patrick Hyland has produced each record after Lush and also plays in her live band, where he serves as musical director.

Which independent label signed Mitski in December 2015 and has released her albums from Puberty 2 onward?

Dead Oceans, based in Bloomington, Indiana, got its first US top-ten album from her in 2022, when Laurel Hell was the country's best-selling album in its release week.

Which Semisonic frontman became Mitski's first-ever co-writer when he helped finish The Only Heartbreaker?

Dan Wilson, who wrote Someone Like You with Adele, got the song when Mitski sat down at his piano during a session meant for other artists.

Mitski's second album, Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, was a senior project recorded with what backing?

A student orchestra of 60 players backed her, and every song got its own video, each one a chapter in a running story.

Mitski's 2013 song Strawberry Blond found a new audience in summer 2020 within which TikTok aesthetic community?

Cottagecore creators adopted the song seven years after it appeared on her self-released second album, which she made as a college senior project.

Which Be the Cowboy opener did Mitski call her white whale, a song she began writing back in college?

Geyser took her longer to write than any other song. She kept changing it for years before deciding she would never be fully happy with it and simply had to finish.

Which lead single from Mitski's 2023 album did she announce in a voice memo sent to her newsletter subscribers?

Bug Like an Angel arrived three days after the memo, which she recorded at the studio where the album was made. A 17-voice choir she arranged herself sings on the record.

Mitski's video for Where's My Phone was inspired by We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a novel by whom?

Shirley Jackson wrote the 1962 novel, and the video borrows its plot: Mitski plays a paranoid character in a gothic house who is trying to protect her sister.

Mitski's 2026 album Nothing's About to Happen to Me follows what kind of main character in an unkempt house?

A reclusive woman is the lead, described in the album's press release as a deviant outside her home and free inside it.

Mitski's 2021 soundtrack album was sold only bundled with This Is Where We Fall, which is what?

A graphic novel from Z2 Comics, it came with her soundtrack on vinyl or cassette, and there were no plans to put the music on streaming services.

Which crooner first recorded I'm a Fool to Want You, which Mitski covered for a 2017 Planned Parenthood benefit?

Frank Sinatra co-wrote the song and first recorded it in 1951. Mitski's version was released on the compilation 7-Inches for Planned Parenthood.

Which music site, alongside Vulture and Consequence, named Mitski's Be the Cowboy its album of the year for 2018?

Pitchfork ranked it first for 2018, and its reviewer called the album Mitski's greatest to date, saying she had never sounded so large.

Mitski's album title Laurel Hell is a folk term for thickets of laurel that trap walkers in which mountain range?

The Appalachians, in their southern stretch, gave her the term. The 2022 album became her first to reach the US top ten, peaking at number five.

After Mitski left social media in 2019, who took over running the accounts under her name?

Her manager posts for her. She quit the platforms because the worshipful commentary about her online was damaging the way she saw herself.

Mitski's mother flew home to Japan while pregnant from which African country, nearly giving birth on the plane?

DR Congo to Japan was the route: her mother wanted Mitski born a Japanese citizen, and she arrived in Mie Prefecture in September 1990.

Mitski finished high school a semester early in the capital of which country, after schools in Alabama and Virginia?

Turkey was her last stop before college: she graduated in Ankara and, at 17 or 18, wrote her first song, Bag of Bones, which ended up on her debut album.

Which director made Mitski's videos for Your Best American Girl and Washing Machine Heart?

Zia Anger also directed the comeback video in which Mitski dances alone through The Egg, an empty performing arts venue in Albany, New York.

Be the Cowboy brought Mitski's work a Grammy nomination at the 61st ceremony in which category?

Best Recording Package rewards an album's art direction rather than its music. The design was by Mary Banas, with photography by Bao Ngo.

Mitski's 2023 album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We got an extra Tokyo listening event in what kind of venue?

A planetarium in Shibuya hosted it, a week after 'double feature' events elsewhere paired the album with a movie Mitski had picked, such as Days of Heaven or La Strada.

Where in the Midwest did Mitski spend five days shooting the video for her 2018 single Nobody?

Kansas City won her over during the shoot. She said she had never had so long to make a video, and that it made her fall unexpectedly in love with the place.

Before it settled into 1980s-style synth-pop, Mitski's Laurel Hell was first conceived as what kind of record?

A punk album came first, then a country one, before the electronic version won out. She wrote most of the songs by 2018 and finished the record during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Mitski's label first reached the Hot 100, before My Love Mine All Mine, with a cover of which Goo Goo Dolls song?

Iris, as covered by Phoebe Bridgers and Maggie Rogers in 2020, got there first. Mitski's song entered at number 76 and climbed into the top 40 a month later.

In the video for My Love Mine All Mine, Mitski builds and climbs a tower of what, balanced on an egg?

Dining chairs are stacked into a sculpture with an egg under one leg. At the top she sits, mimes a spyglass and sees a sunset over the ocean.